All Hail the NCAA's Arcane Rules

Mitch McGary will never wear Michigan Maize again

Friday April 25th the NCAA ended Michigan’s 2014-5 NCAA basketball chances likely ended. Also the NCAA found a new way to blow up twitter and blogs with its arcane rules. The NCAA suspended Mitch McGary for a year effectively forcing him to declare for the NBA Draft. Mitch McGary was an pre-season All American who missed all of last season because of a back injury. He passed 5 drugs tests over the course of the year and failed the 6th. The issue was that the NCAA administered the 6th drug test. The NCAA’s punishment for a failed drug test at a championship event which is what the Sweet Sixteen is considered when McGary failed the test and was forced to suspend for the year.

If Michigan had caught McGary smoking weed in a university drug test one that occurred just two weeks before the NCAA one, the University of Michigan policy is to suspend him for 10% of the season which is effectively 3 games and a week of activities. Michigan’s policy is considered strict by NCAA standards. If McGary’s test had occurred on April 16th and not March 28th, 19 days later then McGary would have been suspended for just 6 months making him eligible for the season and not a year.

To recap: If McGary fails his test 2 weeks earlier, he misses a week and 10% of his games, if he fails 19 days later a change in NCAA policy means his suspension would have been just 6 months and he could play for Michigan next year. Yet McGary got caught in the middle and the NCAA is all but forcing his hand to go to the NBA. The NCAA does not even require teams to test for weed, yet when they do it’s a year punishment. I am sorry, but if you were protecting your student athletes, NCAA, you would have reversed the decision on appeal and not tried to force out McGary.

He smoked weed one time, he understands the mistake he made and now his college career was effectively ended. Marshall Henderson, got a 3 game suspension for being arrested for possession of weed and cocaine, this was after numerous failed drug tests that forced him to transfer 3 different teams in college, yet the University of Mississippi and not the NCAA caught him and they got to determine the punishment. How does that make any sense? Why is everyone not held to the same standard?

This is the NCAA’s critical problem: the rules are inconsistent. It is not just that Marshall Henderson can be pulled over for weed and cocaine possession and get 3 games and McGary smokes weed once, and gets a full year suspension, but coaches can leave a school and break their contract with ease and players cannot. Last week, Kansas St. announced that would not release Leticia Romero from her scholarship. Leticia Romero wanted to transfer after Kansas St. fired their women’s basketball coach Deb Patterson, the women who had recruited Romero. Romero decided the new coach did not fit her style and wanted to leave. Under NCAA rules, if a university does not release a transferring athlete from their scholarship when they choose to transfer, they cannot receive financial aid initially at their next school.

Yes, the coach can leave a university without repercussions, but a student-athlete cannot. The NCAA took a small step to fix this injustice saying that from now on transferring players will not lose a year of eligibility when they transfer if they already redshirted, but it does not stop a university from blocking that transfer. Kansas St. was unhappy with their coach and fired them, the players were unhappy with that decision and could not leave. This is a hypocrisy that are the NCAA rules.

I am sorry Mitch McGary. I am sorry Leticia Romero. I wish the NCAA would change their rules and become a place of logic and reason. You guys are both stuck with horrible rules that do not benefit you.  These are the reasons why there is talk of players trying to unionize. They have no voice. The NCAA recently announced rule changes that are supposed to help benefit the athlete which is awesome. It would have been nice if the athletes had a say in these rule changes.

The players are left voiceless and the rules are arcane. How can you have rules that say that failing a drug test on the Sunday of the Big Ten Tourney when Michigan gave him his drug test meant he would be suspended a week plus 3 games, but if he fails on Thursday at the NCAA tournament the punishment shoots up to a year? How can you freely allow coaches to break contracts and leave schools, but tell the players that signed with those school for those coaches, that they must stay at the school and even if they can get the school to allow them to leave, they must sit out a year before becoming eligible? The NCAA needs to look at itself in the mirror and realize that mistakes are being made and they are at fault.