I’m sure that you have heard of all or some of the allegations being made against the University of Miami’s football and basketball programs in the last week.  In case you haven’t, they range from illegal recruiting, sexual solicitation, cash payments to players, interaction with a sports agency and in one case an abortion. That’s not what I’m going to talk about here.  Instead I’m going to focus on the bigger picture.

If you want to read the Yahoo Sports story for yourself, I have the link here for you.  Truly the most damning story I have ever read in a long time.

One question has come to my mind since these allegations were brought to the national stage.  What is the NCAA’s purpose nowadays?  Yes, they are supposed to be an academic institution first and foremost, but what the heck is going on here?

There have been a lot of schools that have come under some heavy scrutiny in the last few years.  USC was hit hard almost two years ago for the Reggie Bush and O.J. Mayo scandals that have brought down the football and basketball programs.  North Carolina is starting over after some players were involved with a sports agency while still active at UNC.

We all know what happened at Ohio State with the firing…I mean resignation of head coach Jim Tressel for lying to the university and NCAA officials over information he had about some of his players getting gifts.  And who can forget the fire storm about former Auburn quarterback Cam Newton and the possibility that he was paid to play for Auburn university.

You add those examples with the rest that I could relay to you and what does that tell you about the state of college athletics?

No longer can the NCAA hide behind the academic aspect when so many colleges, many of them high profile ones, are breaking so many rules.  So now the question is what can they do to fix this problem?

One solution is to pay the players a nominal fee to help keep them away from the temptation of outsiders. In the long run I don’t think it will prevent the kind of infractions that are going on as we speak, but it will help short term.  What excuse is there for a player who takes something from an outsider when he’s already getting something from the school?  Absolutely none.  That puts the responsibility squarely on the players shoulders.

It should help with those low income families that don’t have anywhere else to go.  I still believe that they should be going to a college to get an education first and foremost.  And it’s also not right that the players don’t get anything for jersey sales with their name is on them.  Someone is making a lot of money and it’s the universities and the NCAA.

Enough is enough.  NCAA president Mark Emmert needs to face facts.  If you want the madness to stop, you have to make a common sense decision.  Make it so the players aren’t tempted to get something from boosters, tattoo owners and scumbags looking to make money off them.  Every player for every university albeit from the tennis team to the football team gets the same fee from the university.

Fair is fair and that should quell the large scale infractions from happening again.  But the other thing that has to happen is the universities need to know that if there is even a hint of compliance in the university, they will get punished severely.

That’s what was alleged to have happened at the university of Miami.  There’s a picture of the university president Donna Shalala getting a $50,000 check from Nevin Shapiro, the man who made the allegations against the university.  It’s a bad image.  Ms. Shalala looks like a kid at Christmas with that check.  It wouldn’t surprise me if it was known in the highest administration on campus about some of the activities Shapiro was doing.

It’s something like this that makes the NCAA become reactive instead of proactive.  It’s time they switch it around and become more involved with the concerns of the public and even those at the universities.  I want to believe that the universities want to comply.  They’re just making it harder for me to believe them.