Spencer: Corbett makes right call challenging NCAA

Delco Times ^ | 1-3-12 | Gil Spencer

[FlJoePa]

By GIL SPENCER gspencer@delcotimes.com

So finally someone in a position of authority in this state is standing up to the late-hitters and pile jumpers that used the Penn State scandal for their own shameful and hypocritical purposes.

That someone is Gov. Tom Corbett, who has finally filed a lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association and its publicity-whore President Mark Emmert.

Better late than never.

Last summer, Emmert declared PSU in violation of the NCAA’s regulations without citing a single concrete NCAA rule that the school had broken and imposed crippling sanctions on its storied football program — including a $60 million fine.

Back then, Corbett suggested the school accept these draconian punishments and move on. Well, he has changed his mind. Good!

Whether the governor has done this because he thinks it will help him in his bid for re-election next year or because he truly believes a real injustice has been done and needs to be righted, is, to my mind, completely irrelevant.

I have a suggestion for those cynics who want to dismiss Corbett’s action as nothing more than a political stunt and here it is: Read the complaint.

It isn’t long, just 43 pages, doubled-spaced. But it is far more convincing in its assessment of the motivations of Emmert and the NCAA, than the Freeh Report ever thought of being concerning its sad targets.

One of the complaint’s authors is Melissa Maxman, an expert in antitrust law for the Washington firm of Cozen O’Connor. Daily Times readers will remember her from her 2001 run for the state Senate as a Democrat from Swarthmore.

When I called her about the suit, she said she couldn’t talk about it and referred me to the governor’s office. But the lawsuit speaks eloquently enough for itself. It lays out the case against the lazy and arrogant NCAA, clearly and damningly.

The NCAA has announced itself “disappointed” in Corbett for challenging its authority to arbitrarily and capriciously harm a member institution. You’d be disappointed too to have your shortcomings pointed out so accurately to the public at large.

Remember how the alleged cover-up of Jerry Sandusky’s crimes was supposed to have been motivated by PSU officials’ “fear of bad publicity?” Well, that’s something the NCAA well understands.

For years, the NCAA has been mocked in the press for its multiple failures to enforce its own actual rules and regulations.

So when this “unprecedented” case presented itself, it also provided the NCAA a chance to finally enhance its own public image.

As the lawsuit states, with Penn State still reeling from the scandal last July, “the NCAA … was not about to miss an opportunity to bring Penn State down even further, or to attempt to improve its own public image by asserting its relevance as a protector of student-athletes.”

Never mind that the school hadn’t violated a single, specific NCAA rule. And never mind that, in the past, the NCAA had steered clear of criminal matters far outside of its purview.

When in 2003 a Baylor University basketball player murdered another player and the coach was caught on tape arranging a cover-up, the NCAA imposed no penalties relating to the murder and cover-up.

In 2010, when a University of Virginia men’s lacrosse player murdered his lacrosse-playing former girlfriend, the NCAA found no reason to sanction the school. And this, despite the victim’s mother’s allegation that the university repeatedly ignored signs of the killer’s violent, erratic and threatening behavior.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, the University of Montana recently failed to investigate numerous allegations of rape by Montana football players. Sanctions from the NCAA? None.

All these cases show that the NCAA has held Penn State to a very different standard than other member schools.

Remember, it’s not as if the guilty parties in the case weren’t being punished. Sandusky was prosecuted and jailed. Others were charged with crimes and fired. Justice was being done without the help of the NCAA.

But the Sandusky scandal proved too tempting for the likes of Emmert and his fellow due-process-be-damned moralizers.

Ignoring their own protocols and procedures (well documented in the complaint) the NCAA put a gun to the head of Penn State’s accidental president, Rodney Erickson. Either he agree to their demands or the school could face the dreaded “death penalty.” Erickson agreed to all the penalties that the NCAA decided to inflict.

So what if thousands of completely innocent people were hurt in the process — from waitresses and bartenders in Happy Valley, to students, athletes to just plain Nittany Lions fans and taxpayers? The hell with due process. And a bunch of outraged, drooling know-nothings were fooled into believing this is what justice is supposed to look like.

Even Emmert admitted last year that “the sexual abuse of children on a university campus by a former university official and even the active concealment of that abuse, while despicable,” ordinarily would not be actionable by the NCAA.

But this was different, according to Emmert. The “culture” of worshipping football at Penn State had to be changed, he said. That was his justification for his taking all these unprecedented powers and actions. This from the head of a $1 billion-a-year organization that makes its millions helping to create the very sort of sports-crazy culture it now claims is evil and must be destroyed. At least in Happy Valley.

Last July, right after Emmert held his now-famous press conference and admitted the lack of institutional precedents for his actions, one prescient wretch wrote:

“In ignoring just about every one of its own procedures for handling disciplinary actions, Emmert has opened the NCAA up to a civil action from Pennsylvania taxpayers, some of whom don’t like the idea of a publicly owned university ceding control of its future to a privately run association with an agenda geared to money-making and heavily greased with sanctimony.”

Well, thank you Gov. Corbett, whatever your motives, for stepping up on behalf of not only Pennsylvania taxpayers, but for the students, athletes, football fans and the small business owners in Happy Valley that financially depend on the competitiveness of the Nittany Lions.

The NCAA now stands formally accused of violating Section 1 of the Sherman (Antitrust) Act.

Oh, and that “prescient wretch?” Well, you’re looking at him.

But what I wrote then is nothing compared to the ugly truth exposed in this needed and poignant complaint.

Read it, Dr. Emmert. And weep.

Read it, the rest of you, and learn something.

[SeminoleCounty]

Good news about the other potential lawsuits.

The NCAA cannot afford to have the Freeh Report and its own rulings go under scrutiny in depositions and hearings. Even the media, who has been the PR firm for the NCAA in the PSU matter, will turn on the NCAA