Driving the Lane: Accountability

It looks like the University of Oregon is really going to get it from the NCAA for recruiting violations in its football program. I don’t know the specifics of the violations, but it sounds very similar to what went down over at the University of Southern California a few years back. I’m guessing the Ducks are going to feel the wrath of the NCAA in the same way the Trojans did. And once again, the head coach of this major institution is likely to get off scot-free.

Back in 2010, former USC head coach Pete Carroll jumped ship from the Trojans to become the Seattle Seahawks head coach just before the school was hit hard with NCAA sanctions. This is the case once again, as Chip Kelly has left Oregon to become head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles.

Clearly if your high-profile coach decides all of a sudden to leave your school for the NFL, very bad things are coming your way. He obviously can feel the NCAA breathing down his neck.

To any selfish head coaches out there, this is definitely the model to follow. Just commit the crap out of recruiting violations, which will subsequently lead to great success, then leave for the NFL the first chance you get.

Something’s not right here. These coaches need to be held accountable for what happened under their watch, just like any other job. If I’m an accountant who cooks the books like Skyler White and Ted Beneke (God, I can’t wait for August 11), and then I leave for another company, I’m still going to be in trouble with the law for what I did at my first company.

Yet these coaches get to say ‘adios’ to their problems. Not only that, they also get to accept an even better job because they used their recruiting violations to make themselves seem like better coaches.

So how do we hold these coaches accountable? As much as I’d like to see them be forced to go back and coach these teams with all the lost scholarships and bowl bans, that obviously can’t happen. And as much as I’d like even more to have them suspended, I don’t think that can happen because you can’t penalize the NFL teams who signed these coaches. Can you imagine the uprising in Eagle-land if Chip Kelly now had to sit out a year?

The punishment has to come by way of a fine, and a hefty one at that. And since I’m assuming the NCAA doesn’t have any power to do that to coaches once they’ve left for the NFL, it has to be something that’s included in the coach’s contract. In every college coach’s contract, there should be a clause that says if any major violations occur directly under his or her watch, then he or she will have to pay.

This payment will either be a portion of the NCAA’s fines or a direct payment to the school for its troubles. There. The problem is solved. No longer will these schools be left in the dust by the men directly responsible for such violations.

I’m under the belief that every single college with a big-time sports program commits recruiting violations. It seems too easy to commit these violations, and with major programs now being uncovered for theirs, it seems as if you have to cheat just to keep up. The schools that we know that have done so, namely Oregon and USC, are only the ones the NCAA has decided to look into.

Therefore, the major problem isn’t these coaches leaving, but rather how they were so easily able to commit these violations in the first place. I don’t claim to have a direct solution to this. But just like the steroid issue in baseball a decade ago (and still ongoing), a closer watch has to be put into place on these major sports programs. Until then, the problem with recruiting violations is just going to continue.