NCAA should have folded long ago

By MATT HAYES of The Sporting News

So this is how the NCAA works, huh? Intimidate, insinuate, debilitate and, finally, exonerate. For an organization so deep in dysfunction and double talk, even this is hard to believe. Let’s recap, shall we?

1) College football coach bets in an NCAA basketball tournament pool with friends after specifically being told by his university it’s OK for him to do it.

2) The NCAA investigates, and the president of college sports’ governing body publicly states that if he were president of said university, he would take “personnel action” against said coach.

3) Days later, said coach is fired.

4) A year and a half later, the NCAA says, oops, we were wrong.

“Why did it have to take 504 days for them to figure it out?’’ Rick Neuheisel asks.

Because Neuheisel’s big, fat lawsuit against the NCAA is on the line, that’s why. The NCAA can talk tough. President Myles Brand can pound his chest and proclaim sweeping changes within the organization, but it doesn’t mean spit when lawyers are tugging at purse strings. Curiously—this is sarcasm, folks—the NCAA refuses to comment on its latest blunder after it closed the books on the University of Washington and its former coach, Neuheisel, by clearing him of any wrongdoing. An NCAA spokesman says legal wrangling precludes public posturing.

Maybe, just maybe, someone should have informed the all-exalted Brand about peacocking in public in 2003, before his pompous proclamation later left the NCAA scrambling to protect a few of the millions it pockets annually as a tax-exempt, nonprofit organization.

Neuheisel is no angel, but he certainly didn’t deserve what he got, either. He’s a coach—like every other coach—who pushes the envelope as far as possible to create a winning advantage. Only this time, it had nothing to do with secondary violations of the NCAA’s massive rulebook. This time, it was about gambling—the unspeakable sin in college sports.

So Brand, then new on the job after serving as president of Indiana University and proudly wearing his public spanking of Bobby Knight on his lapel, decided to take a stand on Neuheisel before digesting all of the information. That selfish stroke of his ego not only likely will cost the NCAA millions in lawsuit damages, it might have cost Neuheisel his career. Once a gambler, always a gambler; once a cheat, always a cheat.

No matter what the truth tells.

Neuheisel has been working part-time as an analyst for College Sports Television, and, on the day of the ruling, he issued his only public comments with aplomb. He just wants to coach again. When reached a day later at his home in Seattle, it was obvious where his thoughts were. He knows exactly how many days it has been since his coaching career was sideswiped, and, more important, he understands the ramifications of it all.

“There’s no way of calculating the residual effect of something like this,’’ he says. “The phone’s not ringing off the hook.’’ He says he already has spent more than $500,000 in legal fees, and says that number likely will pass $1 million before this mess is over. He still has lawsuits pending against Washington and the NCAA, the organization that just cleared him. That’s the same organization whose gambling czar, Bill Saum, not so long ago called Neuheisel’s participation in the pool “the most egregious’’ gambling issue he’d ever seen.

But, really, what was the NCAA going to do? If it had slapped Neuheisel with sanctions and prohibited other member schools from hiring him without also possibly accepting penalties—the dreaded “show cause’’ edict Neuheisel avoided by being cleared—Neuheisel would have had an even stronger lawsuit, if that’s possible. So, now the NCAA can claim that, after an exhaustive investigation for the good of the sport, it has deemed Neuheisel fit to coach again. Hallelujah.

Oh, and, uh, Rick? Can you soften those punitive damages while you’re at it?

I’d feel a lot better about the NCAA and its course of action if Brand would just publicly admit he screwed up, that the organization owes Neuheisel an apology and that member institutions shouldn’t shy from hiring Neuheisel.

And one more thing while we’re tidying up around here: Washington? Spare me this self-righteous indignation that Neuheisel was fired for “lying to his superiors’’ about a San Francisco 49ers job offer and lying to the NCAA during its initial investigation. You fired him after Brand forced your hand; it’s as simple as that.

There are two losers in this sorry story: Neuheisel and Washington. The Huskies were forced to fire one of the game’s better—and certainly more controversial—coaches and watch their program sink.

Neuheisel, who a year earlier had turned down the Notre Dame job and later walked away from a $3 million-per-year offer to coach the 49ers, likely will start over in the Outcast Coaches Club, in which George O’Leary and Mike Price are members.

“I’m willing to listen to anybody,’’ Neuheisel says.

Intimidate, insinuate, exonerate. Then when all else fails, pay ’em off.

Now who’s the gambler?