By now, I’m sure you know the story of the improper benefits obtained by USC football star Reggie Bush and USC basketball star OJ Mayo? Bush lost his Heisman trophy, the Trojan football squad was stripped of wins and national championships, hit with a two-year postseason Bowl ban and hit with scholarship restrictions that have hurt the team’s depth, and continue to do so even now.
Todd McNair was the USC running backs coach, and he was found to have had knowledge of Bush’s impermissible benefits. He was found guilty of same by the NCAA and lost his job at USC. Furthermore, he was slapped with a one-year ‘show cause’ notice from the NCAA, which required any school wanting to hire him during that period to explain why they should be allowed to do so, and await a final judgement from the NCAA. Ultimately, McNair wasn't hired by another school during that period. In fact, he hasn’t worked in college football since.
Which brings us to McNair’s lawsuit against the NCAA, launched in 2011, and gathering momentum now after the Los Angeles Times obtained a series of e-mails sent between various members of the NCAA infractions committee after the newspaper, along with the New York Times, waged a long battle to get them unsealed.
It doesn’t make good reading for the NCAA, but will doubtless please McNair’s legal team, who are suing for lost earnings after having his name dragged through the mud. He claimed that the investigation was one-sided. Based on the documents that I’ve read, the NCAA committee were far from being the unbiased organisation they should be. So far, it’s not even funny.
Amongst inflammatory other comments, USC were criticised in these e-mails for hiring Lane Kiffin to be their head coach, and actually wondered if they could use the hiring of the now-former Trojan head coach as another way to demonstrate that the school displayed a lack of institutional control, which is a program’s death-knell in the eyes of the NCAA.
Most worryingly of all are the twin faux pas’ from committee member Rodney Uphoff, who, in an undated memo, declared that USC needed “a wake-up call” and then compared the ethical conduct case against McNair to circumstances surrounding the Oklahoma City Bombing, claiming that their evidence against the Trojan coach was stronger than that in the case against Terry Nichols, who was convicted as Timothy McVeigh’s accomplice. The fact that the committee is even of a mind to connect the two is absolutely shocking.
Another committee member, Shep Cooper, called McNair “a lying, morally bankrupt criminal, in my view, and a hypocrite of the highest order”. That’s legal dynamite. How can a committee preside honourably and fairly and in an unbiased manner when their thoughts are thus? What Cooper said about McNair is bordering on slander, if not actually crossing that precarious line.
It’s flabbergasting reading. McNair’s lawyers, and USC’s, will likely have a field day with this sort of thing. The notion that the NCAA had a pre-conceived result where the Trojans were concerned is as clear as the day from these documents. They acted with malice, and it’s there for all to see. At least now we know why the NCAA fought so hard for so long to try and ensure this explosive evidence remained sealed!
McNair will barely need to turn up to court daily with this stuff out on the table. The NCAA, aside from being corrupt in this matter, have been damn stupid, too. They’ve left a traceable e-mail trail for the world to now view, and have made McNair’s case as a result. Corrupt and foolish, what a combination. And these are the people running college football? Not very encouraging.
The very fact that the NCAA infraction committee seem to be taking it upon themselves to teach the Trojans a lesson is worrying. The entire NCAA organisation is supposed to be unbiased. They are to examine the facts as they are presented, and make rulings based on those facts, not on the personal thoughts and feelings of the committee. Impartiality is the key, and there was little of that, apparently, on the minds of the NCAA team as they torched the USC program.
McNair and USC stand to make a lot of money here, given that the way the NCAA handled their case was far from impartial. They’ve broken a swathe of NCAA bylaws, and the observation that the committee hated the University of Southern California is given credence by both these damning documents and by the light penalties handed to schools like Miami-FL and Ohio State, whose various infractions were far more widespread than USC’s.
At Southern Cal, Reggie Bush was the only guy on the football team taking impermissible benefits. At Ohio State, a group of guys were busted for selling memorabilia illegally, and at Miami-FL, there’s a trail of infractions over a long period of time. Yet, somehow, the Trojans copped the worst of it. Even Penn State’s sanctions for the Sandusky nightmare were lessened almost immediately. If there’d been true impartiality, I can’t imagine the penalties would’ve been anywhere near as stiff.
Don’t get me wrong: Bush and McNair did the wrong thing. That’s not the issue here. The issue is the way the NCAA handled it: violating it’s own bylaws, changing evidence to suit it’s own purpose, communications clearly showing the malice the committee had for the school. That absolute contempt is now out there for all to see. Hopefully, it will be a catalyst for change because the NCAA system is clearly old, tired and, probably, broken beyond repair.
Although, unfortunately, it’s a little late for USC football.
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