The Scarlet Knights and the Game of Thrones: The NCAA World of Scandals

by: Steve Caronia

My girlfriend and I just started watching Game of Thrones from the very beginning. The first episode, if you remember, ends with the young Bran (son of Lord Ned Stark) accidentally witnessing incestuous hippity-dippity between the Queen and her brother, Jaime.  “The things I do for love,” Jaime says as he pushes the ten-year-old out of a window 30 feet to the ground.

So goes the NCAA.

For decades, we have seen a multitude of instances in which college programs have covered up or acted weakly in the face of reprehensible behavior on the part of its coaches, administrators, and athletes.  Baylor’s men’s basketball.  Oklahoma football and Barry Switzer.  The U.  Let’s not forget the mother of them all, Penn State, Joe Paterno, and Jerry Sandusky. Now we have Rutgers basketball and Mike Rice’s abuse of his players as the latest, albeit least severe, example of this phenomenon.

The incidents involved run the gamut of human depravity. Drugs. Rape. Molestation. Murder. For Rice, it was verbal abuse and bullying.  The common thread among them all? The cover up in the name of the institution.  At every level of authority – from students to athletic directors – we have seen all transgressions get swept under the rug for the greater “good”, ie the power and money train.

Many decry the NCAA and its practices, saying we need a complete demolition of the system and a fresh start.  They aren’t wrong.  But what I find amazing is that people don’t realize that what goes on in the NCAA is ubiquitous in society at large.  What exactly is the difference between what happened at Rutgers et al and what happens every single day in corporate America? Jason Whitlock pointed this out in his column:

The answer of course: no. Why? Because the problem of power abuse and greed is as inherent to human beings as eating and breathing.  It’s not only Wall Street and the NCAA.  It’s the government.  Its big business.  Its little business. It’s you and me.

Maybe most people aren’t as egregious as the Rutgers and Penn States of the world.  But sacrificing integrity for wealth and hegemony is a constant and it’s no worse anywhere than in this country.  It’s the one area where trickle-down economics works.  Everyone is obsessed with getting their piece of the pie, no matter how small.  It’s just that some have the will and cunning to get a bigger piece than others.

Steve Alford made waves when he verbally agreed to stay at New Mexico as head basketball coach only to leave days later for the same position at UCLA.  The high horses were in full regalia.  For one, Peter King insinuated on Twitter that journalists with a contract would never do such a thing.  Forget that a) journalists operate in a landscape where contracts are an exception and b) Alford didn’t truly have a contract.  I’m not saying that what Alford did was commendable, but how many people can honestly say that they wouldn’t jump at a greater opportunity if legally permissible?  Many people adhere to the code “get rich, or make others uncomfortable and weasel around if you have to trying.” They would say “business is business” and move on.

When it comes to massive, wide scoping scandals, business should never be business. What these universities do is reprehensible and something must be done.  There are certainly aspects of the NCAA system that are somewhat unique, such as how student-athletes are taken advantage of by schools to line the fat-cats’ pockets.  I say somewhat – I’m pretty sure exploitation of workers was a concept Karl Marx came up with before James Naismith hung up the peach basket.  That’s why the idea of government intervention, while the only option, is laughable.  Do we really think that a few basketballs and slurs flung a young man’s way is going to incite a government that has allowed – nay encouraged – the complete dismantling of the middle-class by the same ideology.  At best, we’ll get them to pay some attention to it in a congressional hearing like they did with steroids in baseball.

At the end of the day, though, each of these examples comes down to people making decisions.  The decision to lie.  The decision to turn the other way.  The decision to whisteblow.  Don’t think these decisions are unique to the NCAA system.  They occur in every single institution the world over.  They have been for a long time.

They have been since…A Song of Fire and Ice.

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