February 20th

February 20 will be remembered for a long time, I think. Maybe you don’t remember what you were doing on that Friday, but I certainly do. I had meetings in the morning, rushed to JFK airport only to find my flight was delayed, and finally arrived back home in Spartanburg late that evening.

Also on that day the Auburn Men’s Swim Team was pulling away from the rest of the SEC during the Conference swimming championships.

But these are not the reasons I think February 20th will be remembered.

No, I think it will be because of a meeting that took place. A summons to appear.

If you know anything about jurisprudence, you know that if you are being accused of wrongdoing and/or sued, that your best venue is to have the case thrown out on summary judgement. If that doesn’t happen, then the next best thing is to have the case decided on summary judgement. What you DON’T want is for the case to be handed over for a trial before a jury of “peers”.

The same is true with the NCAA. When a prelimary letter of inquiry (PLOI) is received by member institution, with questions pertaining to potential allegations, the school in question wants a paper response, and a summary judgement….hoping it is all thrown out. What the institution does NOT want is to have to appear before the entire Infractions Committee of the NCAA to plead their case.

Which brings us…..once again…..to the University of Alabama. Already under shadow of a near-death penalty experience with the NCAA, they found themselves once again having to respond to rule-breaking allegations. They were summoned to appear before the Infractions Committee on February 20th.

This time it was over text books being bought on student-athletes’ scholarship accounts for other students not on scholarship. Alabama admits that this happened on numerous occasions, was pervasive in that it wasn’t limited to only one sport’s athletes, and that it was brought forward by a whistle blowing employee of the school bookstore.

Alabama self-imposed some “playing-time” penalties on a few football players. A couple of employees were put on wage freeze and reprimanded. All of this was good. But it was after the fact.

The NCAA would NOT give a summary judgement on the latest case of Tide Rule Breaking. Rather, as a committee they found the University of Alabama guilty of “Lack of Institutional Monitoring”.

Lack of Institutional Monitoring is only 1 level below Lack of Institutional Control. Lack of Institutional Control is what got SMU the death penalty in football, and has cost many other schools dearly with long probations, no TV, no post season bowls, etc.

February 20th, the NCAA told Alabama they were guilty of Lack of Institutional Monitoring. Kind of like manslaughter vs. murder. And now Alabama waits for it’s sentence.

Maybe I am wrong, but for a school that was told they were only inches away from receiving the harshest penalty the NCAA could give out….the death penalty….and being under the window of the “repeat offender” classification….I think the outcome is going to be serious. Very serious.

And February 20th will be remembered for a long time.

WJLaneSR