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Jon Solomon: [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Bruce Pearl - 2 tales of hypocrisy and face saving
It has always been difficult to take big-time college athletics at face value.
The pretense that it's mainly a pure mission to serve "student-athletes" is difficult to stomach,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], perhaps now more than ever.
The more you try to enjoy the games, the more corruption entangles them.
The more you marvel at what you see, the more revised history makes you realize you never saw it.
The more you believe in people's words, the more they seek forgiveness when they have to change them later.
During the past week, [link widoczny dla zalogowanych]and Bruce Pearl expressed contrition for violating NCAA rules. They reside in different stages of NCAA purgatory, that long, twisting journey where hypocrisy meets reality.
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych] was probably moments away from the Heisman Trust stripping him of the award. It was the byproduct of years of [link widoczny dla zalogowanych] stonewalling NCAA investigators that landed major penalties on USC due to impermissible benefits his family received.
At least [link widoczny dla zalogowanych]finally returned the award. These days, how many athletes actually acknowledge mistakes with such a gesture, even if it's for PR purposes?
Revising history like this always feels wrong. [link widoczny dla zalogowanych]won the Heisman on the field in 2005.
It's also hard to get riled up when college athletes, who make millions of dollars for universities and the adults who work there, find ways to get paid.
But academic fraud? Now that's an issue that strikes at the heart of a school's integrity. That's cheating a student out of a quality education that he or she could use for years to come. But do college fans care about that? No, they care more about athletes being paid.
The Heisman Trophy's bylaws state a player must be eligible under NCAA rules to win, so there was probably no way around [link widoczny dla zalogowanych]losing the trophy. (Side note: Shall we wait for the day when there are bylaws written for alleged murderers, and when every Heisman winner gets grilled on whether he received extra benefits?)
The Heisman gets to pretend it's still pure. In return, [link widoczny dla zalogowanych]buys himself some much-needed good PR, even if it's a token gesture.
Pearl now finds himself where [link widoczny dla zalogowanych]once sat. Except Pearl lied to the NCAA about a relatively minor transgression: hosting recruits illegally at his home when they were high school juniors.
According to CBSSports.com, Pearl initially denied to the NCAA that two recruits had been to his home. The problem: The NCAA already had a picture of Pearl and one of the recruits at the Tennessee basketball coach's home.
When Pearl said his conscience got the best of him to confess, he presumably confused that with self-interest. He had been caught.
Tennessee expects Pearl to face unethical conduct charges from the NCAA, yet has kept him as coach. In a pre-emptive move, the school reduced his salary by $1.5 million over five years and suspended off-campus recruiting for Pearl and his staff starting Sept. 24.
That's just enough of a cushion for Pearl to try to salvage his next recruiting class. You know, in order to keep winning.
Pearl is lucky he still has a job. Oklahoma State football player Dez Bryant was suspended for a year for lying to the NCAA about a visit to Deion Sanders' house that wasn't a violation. Pearl is still employed after lying to the NCAA about a visit to his home by recruits that was a violation.
And we wonder why college athletes have their hands out.
What makes Pearl's story so galling is how he wore his past as a badge of honor. Pearl was the Iowa assistant who secretly taped a phone call in which recruit Deon Thomas talked about promises of money and a car from then-Illinois assistant Jimmy Collins.
Collins got tarnished. Until recently, Pearl was black-balled for years because he turned in one of his own.
When he spoke in Birmingham a couple of years ago at my synagogue, Temple Emanu-El, Pearl talked about how he wrestled with his conscience over how to handle the Thomas tape. He talked about how his Jewish religion taught him to do the right thing. He talked about how observant of NCAA rules he needs to be because the Thomas tape means he will always be closely watched by other coaches.
Today is Yom Kippur, the day of atonement for Jews, when they seek forgiveness. On a day like this, it's hard not to wonder how Pearl views his words compared to his deeds.
[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]is on his way toward forgiveness. Pearl is only just starting.
It's a tired refrain in college athletics, year after year after year.