NCAA needs to change

Given the University of Miami bombshell that dropped Tuesday, perhaps Emmert was just foreshadowing things to come.

To summarize, a former University of Miami athletic boost-er, who is serving 20 years for a Ponzi scheme, has come clean to Yahoo!Sports reporter Charles Robinson, detailing eight years of improper payments and benefits — ranging from money to prostitution — to Miami football and basketball players. Heck, even assistant coaches and the president of the school itself have been implicated.

Nevin Shapiro laid it all out for Robinson, who con firmed the claims through one of the best pieces of investigative journalism — ever.

Granted, Shapiro’s allegations must be taken with a grain of salt. He is, after all, a convicted felon. But considering he is already serving time, it’s not as if his revelations will impact his prison sentence.

But considering all the work Robinson did, it’s hard to argue Shapiro is lying. If there was ever a situation that called for "the death penalty” — the suspension of the entire University of Miami football program — this is it. For those of you who remember Southern Methodist University in Texas receiving the death penalty in the early 1980s, that was amateur hour compared to what went on at

Miami.

And given Miami’s consistent run-ins with the NCAA over the last 25-plus years, now would be an excellent time for the NCAA to

make an example of this renegade program.

But first things first. The biggest problem in college sports are the deep-pocket athletic boosters — those supporters of college athletic programs who lavish money on their sport of choice. The NCAA has got to find a way to control a school’s boosters. I’m sure there are hundreds and thousands of boosters who abide by the rules, but as the old saying goes, it only takes one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch.

The easiest solution would be to ban athletic boosters altogether, but that would hurt the schools that do abide by NCAA laws. Perhaps the answer is to just ban booster groups at "big name” schools. Universities such as Miami, North Carolina, Ohio State and USC — four schools that have recently run afoul of the NCAA — have millions in donations pouring in anyway, they could probably do without the money from athletic boosters.

Boosters, however, are just a symptom of the malaise that has infected college sports. What was once considered just a part of the college experience has developed into a billion-dollar business, with the players getting the short end of the stick. While the schools, coaches and administrators get filthy rich, players have a hard time scraping together enough change to afford a pizza on a Friday night. When 18-, 19- and 20-year-old players — many from impoverished backgrounds — have money, women and fun flashed in front of them, what do you expect them to do? Sure, the ethical move would be to turn down those perks to avoid having their school run into problems. But the reality is, in most cases, those players will be long gone before there are any repercussions. They figure, "Might as well get mine, considering the university is making millions off me.”

Emmert’s proposed revamping of the NCAA rulebook may be too little, too late, however. I read a report that said there have been ongoing talks among the biggest programs in the nation to break away from the NCAA and form their own organization, which will have separate rules.

Perhaps that’s not a bad idea. Everyone knows that the biggest and best programs in the country are not in the market to graduate student-athletes. They’re just trying to make a buck. The players themselves are just as culpable, whose only goal is to become a professional athlete, school be damned.

Considering there are already Division I, II and III championships (in addition to NAIA championships), why doesn’t the NCAA just

create an "Open” division, much like the Central Coast Section does for high school football? In response to grumblings from many

public schools about the best teams in the section (read: West Catholic Athletic League) dominating the other divisions of CCS, CCS administrators developed the Open Division to have the best of the best face off against each other, thus giving other schools a chance at winning a CCS title. While an Open Division at the Division I level would not level the playing field and would further divide the haves from don’t-have-as-muches, at least there would be no pretense about what the ultimate goal is: win football games and make boatloads of money.

While Shapiro blatantly flaunted the system, maybe it will turn out to be the best thing to happen to big-time college athletics. Maybe

this will be the fiasco that finally causes the NCAA to get its house in order and deal with the rampant and blatant cheating in college

sports. Unfortunately, I have the feeling it won’t have any impact on anything other than University of Miami athletics.

And it won’t be the last big-name school accused of cheating.