McMahon: Strike
Dec 16, 2010, 7:04 PM | Updated: Jun 5, 2012, 3:27 am
The NCAA umpires have made the call and ASU baseball is out — out of post-season play for next season anyway.
The Vatican of college athletics has been looking at suspected wrongdoings by the Sun Devils for some time now and the gavel has fallen. Former coach Pat Murphy was fired some time ago. The ASU athletic department has been charged with “a lack of institutional control.” It appears that means nobody is in charge of the hen house.
And while Arizona State’s track record with two similar violations in five years is worth a critical look, the question remains — can anyone ever be in complete compliance with an NCAA rule book the approximate size of the Library of Congress?
In college sports, there are cheaters, semi-cheaters and unintentional cheaters. There are Heisman fathers accused of selling their children. But when are we going to finally acknowledge that college athletes often have little or no pocket change while executives are employing them to perform in a billion-dollar business.