One of Life's Inevitable's: Cheating in College Football

Constants exist in life. Some things seem inevitable -- death and taxes, Wyoming voting Republican, the New England Patriots making the Super Bowl, and, until this year, the Connecticut women’s basketball team going undefeated. In the years we’ve been following sports, we’ve seen one more -- cheating in college football. The NCAA recently passed recruiting changes designed to streamline the process and reduce incentives to bend rules.  We doubt these so-called reforms will change much because none of them – an early signing period, adjustments in the calendar regarding visits and contact with recruits, limits on hiring relatives and people close to prospects – address either major recruiting abuses or the culture of impatience that fuels rampant cheating.

The Major Problem   There always has been cheating in college football.  We think there always will be cheating in college football.  If you can’t un-ring a bell or take politics out of politics, you can’t get cheating out of this sport.  That doesn’t mean fans, media, and administrators shouldn’t think about the problem.

One part of the equation involves coaches who funnel under-the-table payments to players.  We see nothing wrong with banning coaches, for as much as three years, proven to have engaged in this conduct, so long as the NCAA retains discretion to mitigate penalties under certain circumstances.  Another part of the problem involves the presence on college rosters of players whose character makes them unfit to represent institutions of higher education.      

Anyone who keeps up with the sport knows about the horror stories like the sexual abuse scandal at Baylor. What people who don’t follow the sport might not know is how close to the line many programs operate by taking risks on players who, before they enroll, showed a propensity for bad acts that predict future problems like  sexual misconduct, academic fraud, and drug and alcohol abuse.  Many coaches, especially in their early years at a school when they’re trying to establish a winning culture, know the risks associated with particular players, but recruit and sign them anyway because they see no alternative.  If they don’t take them they likely will never win enough to get or keep a college head coaching job.

Hot Seats   While athletic directors and presidents claim they want things done the “right way,” college football’s dirty little not-so-secret maxim is that doing things the “right way” works only so long as the team wins 8-10 games a year and regularly gets a bowl invitation.  Drop below that and no matter how good the team’s academic record, no matter how many good citizens the program turns out, the coach will find himself on the proverbial hot seat.

Take, for example, Arkansas coach Brent Bielema.  We all follow Arkansas for one reason or another – each of us grew up in the state, one of us went to school there for a short time, two of us have daughters who earned degrees from Arkansas.  Bielema arrived in Fayetteville in 2013 off a 68-24 record and three Big 10 championships at Wisconsin. He followed two major Arkansas coaching disasters – Bobby Petrino’s implosion in a sex scandal and the ill-fated John L. Smith interim experiment that resulted in a 4-8 record for a 2012 team some predicted would win the South Eastern Conference championship.

Bielema faced a major overhaul project at Arkansas.  Aside from the team’s on-the-field shortcomings, Razorback players performed dreadfully in academics and more than a few couldn’t stay out of legal trouble.  The published indicators show marked academic progress among Arkansas players and the number getting into legal difficulties has dropped to almost nothing.  Arkansas appears to now have a team in which the university and its fans can take pride. This progress, however, may come with an expensive price tag for Bielema.

No one other than Athletic Director Jeff Long and a few other top UA officials know if Bielema really is on the hot seat as the 2017 season approaches.  But, read websites and fan message boards and you can feel unrest building.  Last season ended badly for Arkansas. The Razorbacks finished a pedestrian 7-6, suffering a crushing loss to a bad Missouri team in the regular season finale and an embarrassing bowl defeat at the hands of Virginia Tech, despite a 24 point half time lead.  The bottom line: all Bielema’s progress in cleaning up the program won’t mean much if he doesn’t win more games. Fans and media acknowledge that Arkansas plays in the toughest division of any conference in America – the SEC West – but nobody cuts Bielema slack for that.  It won’t save his job if the Hogs don’t get better soon.

Limits   Many college football fan bases dismiss or ignore the limits under which the program they support operates.  Arkansas, for example, sits in a geographic area that makes it unlikely (not impossible, but unlikely) the Razorbacks can compete, year in and year out, for SEC and national championships without cutting corners on players.  Arkansas’s small population base makes recruiting against Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and the like exceedingly difficult.  Arkansas can develop and nurture enough high character players to field an outstanding team every three or four years.  But, without player personnel compromises, the Arkansas fan base shouldn’t count on winning ten, 11, or 12 games every year.  That hasn’t happened since Arkansas joined the SEC in the early 90s and nothing makes us think it’s about to start.

So, what’s reasonable under such circumstances?  What’s wrong with supporting a program that every year produces a bevy of graduates headed for careers as businessmen, professionals, corporate executives, teachers, coaches, community leaders, and government officials? What’s wrong with cheering for players who stay out of trouble, even if they win “only” seven or eight games a year?  Nothing we can see, especially when the program must live with built-in limitations that likely make doing better contingent on cutting corners and compromising its integrity.  Like we said, nothing we can see.