The men's basketball team at Massachusetts’ flagship university wasput on probation, forced to vacate wins, and fined on Friday for ever so slightly overpaying some of their players’ financial aid between 2014 and 2017.
UMass Amherst initiated an investigation into their men’s basketball team to determine whether players improperly received free tickets to on campus concerts several years ago. While the free concerts did not turn out to be an issue, the NCAA uncovered the minor financial aid errors. The mistake was made after some players moved from on-campus housing to cheaper off-campus housing and their financial aid housing rate remained the same when it should have decreased. It resulted in the players’ collectively receiving a few thousand dollars more than they were supposed to. UMass basketball head coachMatt McCall is on a $3.25 million contract.
No players or coaches did anything wrong and nobody affiliated with the program or working at UMass knew anything incorrect had occurred. Nevertheless, the NCAA cracked down and forced the team to vacate three years of wins. Imagine if a professor decided to vacate your last three test scores because, upon further review, you had accidentally used a number three pencil instead of the number two pencil required by the syllabus. If a teacher, parent, boss or any other authority figure acted this way, it would leave us scratching our heads in disbelief. But this is the way the NCAA has governed for years.
The NCAA’s UMass decision makes no sense, but it pales in comparison to past cases of pure ridiculousness. University of Nevada, Las Vegas basketball player Chris Richardson had nothing to sleep on when he moved to campus as a first-year in 1998 so an assistant coach gave him a used mattress. The NCAA deemed this an improper gift and suspended Richardson for part of his junior season.During the 2018 college football season an Oregon recruit’s dad forgot his razor during a trip to Eugene, Ore. A member of the Oregon game day staff found out and bought the dad a basic traveling toiletry set. Apparently, the NCAA prefers five o’ clock shadow to a clean shave because they ruled it a “breach of conduct” and a level three rule violation.
The NCAAreported over a billion dollars in revenue during the 2016–17 academic year. You’d think an organization with so much money would allow its unpaid employees to eat as they please, but that’s not how the NCAA rolls. When three Oklahomaathletes attended a graduation banquet in 2014 and ate the pasta that was served, the NCAA claimed they had violated its rules. In case you haven’t caught on yet, just about everything is against NCAA rules. The NCAA made each player pay $3.83 to charity to regain their eligibility. One of the players, offensive lineman Austin Woods, joked, "we felt we ate more than $3.83 so we donated $5."
The NCAA calls itself a “member-led organization dedicated to the wellbeing and lifelong success of college athletes,” but its rules consistently serve to undermine and restrict the livelihood of college athletes.
Hypocrisy: noun. “The practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform” (Oxford).
