Why Kansas basketball’s probation is a reminder of the unfairness in college athletics
About a year ago, in the vacuum of the gridlock and other deficiencies that defined the NCAA-appointed defunct-as-of-Wednesday Independent Accountability Resolution Process (IARP), Kansas Athletics resolved to try to break up the logjam.
“In the spirit of just wanting to move forward,” as athletic director Travis Goff put it Wednesday, KU at the time announced it was suspending men’s basketball coach Bill Self and assistant coach Kurtis Townsend for four games and implementing new recruiting restrictions.
Years and years and years and years and years into the NCAA case that began with a nuclear allegation of five Level I violations, it was easy to joke then that the gesture seemed as Self-imposed as self-imposed.
And that KU was not just seizing the narrative, but even dictating the ultimate ruling itself.
As it happens, the perception of KU determining its own fate wasn’t so far-fetched, at least not in terms of the outcome.
Six years after the initial allegations directed at KU through the FBI’s probe of Adidas and the ensuing college basketball corruption trial, the ominous potential ramifications essentially evaporated with the ruling issued on Wednesday.
The IARP’s Independent Resolution Panel concluded Kansas, Self and Townsend committed no Level I violations. The hearing panel wrote that it “applied significant weight to Kansas’ self-imposed penalties” and issued only mild sanctions of its own: a three-year probation, during which KU is eligible for the NCAA Tournament, and the vacating of 15 victories from the 2017-18 season.
At Allen Fieldhouse on Wednesday afternoon, Self and Goff spoke to the verdict as vindication and thanked the IARP for its fair consideration of KU’s arguments.
No doubt Kansas fans will embrace that thinking, too, even as other fan bases appraise it quite differently, given the feedback I’ve been getting.
In the end, it’s hard to make definitive declarations without days to absorb and process the 162-page report and without knowing just how the committee came to some of its conclusions.
It’s complicated and even confounding to some degree.
And it’s also less explosive yet because it’s taken so long that we’re in an entirely new frontier in college sports now than when it started.
Consider that in downgrading KU to two Level II and two Level III violations, the panel determined “the institution was responsible for actions of apparel company outside consultant, a representative of athletics interests, when he arranged to provide $4,000 in extra benefits” to the mother of a recruit.
And that KU, similarly through Adidas, was responsible for a $2,500 “recruiting inducement” to the guardian of Silvio De Sousa, the player in whose name those games and the Jayhawks’ 2018 Final Four appearance will be vacated. And another $200 payment.
All against the rules of the times.
And the principle is the issue, isn’t it?
But it’s also minor from where it started and true that outrage over such sums now seems almost silly and quaint given the seismic changes brought on in the NIL era.
The most prominent athletes, at KU and elsewhere, now can command tens of thousands of dollars in name, image and likeness deals that at least indirectly hover as recruiting inducements, even if that’s technically impermissible.
The latest to say the quiet part out loud was Kentucky football coach Mark Stoops after a 51-13 loss to Georgia.
“I can promise you: Georgia, they bought some pretty good players,” he said on his weekly radio show. “You’re allowed to these days, and we could use some help. … I encourage anybody that’s disgruntled to pony up some more.”
Or as Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher put it a few years ago on The Paul Finebaum Show: “There’s always been NIL stuff going on; it just wasn’t legal.”
Now it is, making it harder to be indignant about stuff that’s convoluted and inconclusive anyway.
But wherever you might stand on what this says about KU, it absolutely highlights one of the ongoing problems of the NCAA and college sports: the sense of inequity and unfairness in how its members are governed.
The IARP was created five years ago, as Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde described it, in response to the college basketball corruption probe and as a means to “address especially complicated and contentious cases.” The belief at the time, he added, was that it would free the NCAA from insinuations of bias.
But its final act before being dissolved for its multifaceted inefficiency was the antithesis of that.
Not for the ruling on KU in itself, but for what it reiterated about the governance of college athletics: The enforcement and punishment process comes off as inconsistent and even whimsical and, thus, not credible.
While the recent Oklahoma State and 2019 Mizzou cases weren’t rendered by the IARP, their rulings in such contrast to this one remain examples of why it’s hard to have faith in the way the NCAA has operated and how it will proceed from here.
Oklahoma State was banned from the 2022 NCAA Tournament after self-reporting violations related to the FBI probe considered less severe than those at least initially made against KU.
Mizzou, meanwhile, was smacked with postseason bans in football, baseball and softball, among other sanctions, rooted in the matter of one rogue tutor.
That ruling came just over a year after North Carolina eluded NCAA punishment despite epidemic academic fraud among athletes because it shamelessly argued that it wasn’t an NCAA issue since the scamming opportunities weren’t exclusive to athletes.
While every case is different, and the very makeup of those making these decisions was different, the inconsistencies are deeply troubling.
And it remains to be seen if the next iteration of NCAA enforcement can restore — or store in the first place — a belief that its rules are applied evenhandedly.