What Was Mark Emmert Busy Doing Instead Of Following Up On 37 Sexual Assaults? Here Are 15 Possibilities
Didn’t want anyone to miss or forget about this story they tried to hit us with during the Friday night news dump.
Wouldn’t want it to slip out of people’s minds or slide down the Google search results that MARK EMMERT the President of the NCAA was reportedly informed of not one…not two…not three…THIRTY SEVEN instances of sexual assault at Michigan State in 2010. If you’re checking your calendars right now, yes, you’re correct, it is 2018. MARK EMMERT reportedly has sat on this information for 8 years, allegedly.
What was he busy doing during that time?
I took a deep dive to try and figure it out. Let’s take a look at some of his most important work over the past almost-decade.
What was more important to Mark Emmert than following up on sexual assault?
Possibility #1) Ohio State kids getting tattoos.
The fact that one of the biggest, most well known “scandals” of the past 8 years is college football players getting tattoos speaks for itself. Ask someone to name the first scandal that comes to their mind when they think of college sports – hopefully they’ll say Penn State or Baylor, but chances are good they’ll instantly say Tattoo U.
Possibility #2) Oklahoma players taking second servings of pasta at a team buffet.
“Pasta in excess.”
Emmert and the NCAA tried to save face by saying no no no, there are no rules against this, don’t be silly. But there was a reason Oklahoma felt they had to self report players taking extra servings of pasta.
Possibility #3) Players putting cream cheese and jelly on their bagels.
One of the most infamous rules in college athletics.
Emmert got it changed though. What a leader!
Yahoo! Sports reports that the NCAA is proposing to finally allow schools to serve their athletes butter, jam and even cream cheese with the bagels already provided. Proposal No. 2011-78 is one of 91 potential rule changes that will be reviewed next January before approval.
Possibility #4) Homeless players sleeping on a teammates’ floor.
One of my favorites. An instant classic. Homeless Academic All-Big 12 Baylor Running Back Silas “Salsa Nacho” Nacita Kicked Off Team By NCAA For Accepting A Place To Live. Great piece here on the story of Salsa Nacho, and how the NCAA treated him.
Possibility #5) Players playing pickup in a Church rec league over the summer.
Mark Emmert hates God.
Possibility #6) Kickers with Youtube accounts.
Is sexual assault bad? Yes, but what about college kickers making 20s of dollars on Google Adsense?
TAMPA BAY – A UCF kicker says NCAA rules are forcing him to choose between playing football and making YouTube videos.
The kickoff specialist, Donald De La Haye, explained his predicament in a video he posted over the weekend on his channel, which has more than 53,000 subscribers.
“Some people upstairs aren’t happy with my videos, and they feel like I’m violating NCAA rules…” he said in his video (which you can see at the bottom of this post). “I guess I can’t make any videos that make it obvious that I’m a student-athlete, because that makes it seem like I’m using my likeness and my image to make money and all this, which I’m really not.”
Can’t expect Emmert to handle EVERYTHING.
Possibility #7) Mismanaging 4 real, important investigations as poorly as humanly possible.
Miami, Penn State, UNC, Baylor. Take your pick. Any time the NCAA has been faced with something that ACTUALLY needs to be investigated and dealt with, they have botched it so incredibly bad it’s almost impressive.
Possibility #8) Barring players for repeating 9th grade due to family issues.
Read the story and the history of Evan Battey and tell me if you agree with the NCAA’s decision.
“I’ve been coaching Division I basketball now for 24 years. I’m not sure I’ve ever been around a kid who’s probably more ready academically and athletically to play,” Boyle said. “It’s not a decision I agree with. We went through the waiver process and we lost the waiver. It’s extremely disappointing. The people that were on that waiver committee missed the boat on this one. They have no idea what kind of kid Evan Battey is.
“It’s a little bit ironic to me with all the things that are going on in college basketball. North Carolina academic scandal, they lawyer up and fight the NCAA for two years and they win on a technicality. They get off scot-free. There’s an FBI investigation going on. There’s four assistant coaches that have been arrested by the FBI. As of today, nothing has happened to those four schools. No ramifications for those sorts of things. But you have a kid who struggled a little bit when he was 13-years old in the classroom due to a lot of personal and family issues he was dealing with at the time, and he gets stuck sitting out this year.”
Possibility #9) Suspending players for “not making satisfactory progress towards a degree” while on pace to graduate early.
Sorry Jalen…you’re making such great progress that you’re actually not making progress.
Oakland’s Jalen Hayes, who averaged 15.9 points and 8.0 rebounds last season, is two games through an NCAA-administered four-game suspension that lacks common sense and compassion. I’ve written about it before. But, if you missed that column, here’s the deal: Hayes is a human resources development major who is on track to graduate in December. And yet the NCAA initially ruled him academically ineligible for this fall semester because, according to NCAA rules, he “failed to make satisfactory progress toward a degree” in the past year.
Again, Hayes is on track to graduate in December.
But the NCAA’s rules, as written, insist he’s not making “satisfactory progress toward a degree.” And it’s because the 6-foot-7 forward received a 2.5 grade in a class last spring, which led to Oakland not giving him credit for the class because the school requires students to have at least a 2.8 to get credit in Hayes’ major. When Hayes failed to get that credit, even though he didn’t fail the class, he dropped below the 18 hours the NCAA requires student-athletes to complete between the start of fall classes and spring commencement. So the NCAA ruled him academically ineligible for the fall semester — essentially because Oakland, unlike some universities, actually holds its student-athletes to real standards.
Possibility #10) Impermissible Laser Tag.
Saw two cases of this – you’d think people would learn!
Other violations weren’t as straight-forward: At a team meal for the Oregon baseball team, there was “impermissible entertainment” in the form of miniature golf and laser tag. Teams can provide an occasional meal for their athletes — Sykes said Oregon’s athletes are allowed to be provided 12 meals per academic year — and entertainment, too. In this case, Sykes said, the entertainment must have been considered excessive.
TSN – Fake-zapping your friends under the black lights is a recruiting staple in Louisville, apparently, because it forced the men’s basketball program to self-report two separate Level III NCAA violations from a laser tag trip it took in April.
On April 19, six members of the men’s basketball team took a trip to a local laser tag facility where they were given admission money by the program, according to information obtained by Sporting News in an open records request. But because those players received money for admission outside of the playing season, Louisville’s compliance office had to self-report the news to the NCAA. All six players were then ordered to donate their $7 admission fee to charity.
The fun didn’t stop there.
On that same day, two recruits accompanied the team to laser tag. Louisville basketball was allowed to pay the cost of admission for the two prospective student-athletes, but their host students forgot — we’ve all done this, naturally — to take the cost of admission out of the money they’d been given to act as hosts.
Louisville’s compliance staff made the two host players pay up, and then reminded them it’s not cool to forget to deduct expenses from their host money budget.
Possibility #11) Congratulatory Phone Calls to Little League Pitchers
Geno Auriemma got hit with a recruiting violation for calling Mo’Ne Davis to congratulate her on her Little League games.
Having heard that 13-year-old Little League World Series sensation Mo’ne Davis is a big UConn women’s basketball fan, coach Geno Auriemma took the time to call the star pitcher to congratulate her on leading her team to the U.S. semifinals.
What a thoughtful gesture by Auriemma, right? Well, apparently not everybody thinks so.
The NCAA ruled Thursday that Auriemma had committed a secondary recruiting violation by calling Davis because coaches are not permitted to call a prospect until late in their junior year of high school. Secondary violations carry little if any punishment because they are typically inadvertent in nature and represent no significant competitive advantage.
Possibility #12) Recruit Using Too Much WiFi
These damn kids trying to get internet to do their homework. Ever heard of a library?
A recruit, staying in the Embassy Suites on an official visit, ordered Internet service for $9.95. Assistant women’s coach Graeme Abel did not notice the additional expense on the bill.
Resolution: The recruit was ruled ineligible for competition at the school until repayment for the bill is made to the charity of her choice. The coaching staff was provided detailed rules education regarding additional lodging expenses. The form given to recruits on official visits was modified to include mention of additional lodging expenses.
Possibility #13) Improper Icing On Cookies
Read this one from South Carolina out loud if you want to LOL.
Impermissible iced decorations on a cookie cakes given to prospects.
Possibility #14) Using University water to wash your car.
Women’s golfer at a WCC school penalized for washing her car.
The WCC school in question self-reported the extra benefits violation to the NCAA, Yahoo Sports! reported. Yahoo also reported the NCAA asked the golfer to pay the school $20, which they said was the value of the water and hose.
Possibility #15) Fucking his own face.
Really hoping it was this one. Fingers crossed.