The inaugural College Football Playoff might want to hang out a sign: “Will the last good player eligible to play for our championship turn out the lights?”
At the rate this is going, the only players sure to be in proper NCAA standing come January figure to be the ones nobody solicits to sign anything. (Didn’t Paul Johnson once make a joke about his Yellow Jackets never being asked for their autographs? There you go — Georgia Tech, 2014 national champ.)
First Georgia’s Todd Gurley, recently the favorite for the 2014 Heisman Trophy. Now, per Darren Rovell and Mark Schlabach of ESPN, comes a report that Florida State is looking into the provenance of memorabilia apparently signed by Jameis Winston, the 2013 Heisman holder. All this after last summer’s kerfuffle over Johnny Manziel, who won the 2012 Heisman.
The point being: It’s becoming harder and harder to be a big-time college football player — because being a big-time player brings big-time monetary temptation. The NFL won’t allow you to be drafted until you’re three years out of high school. The NCAA won’t allow you to peddle your likeness for cash. You’re the biggest man on campus, but you’re not allowed to pair fortune with fame until those three years are up.
Every player knows that you’re not supposed to sign for money. Every player also knows that Johnny Football was suspended for a half against Rice because he lawyered up and the NCAA, which is incapable of pouring Perrier from a boot, could find no evidence. Not coincidentally, Birmingham attorney William King, who represented Manziel and 2010 Heisman winner Cam Newton in their dealings with the NCAA, confirmed to the Associated Press on Monday that he now represents Gurley.
There was a time when the NCAA wouldn’t back down from a fight. That time is long gone. The NCAA has been losing on all fronts — in court with the Ed O’Bannon lawsuit; in-house, with the Big Five conferences bullying smaller leagues into letting them write their own ticket, and most notably in the plebiscite of public opinion.
The NCAA had Miami cold and botched the investigation. The NCAA tried to get tough with Penn State post-Sandusky and overreached so badly that it has spent two years paring the sanctions. The once-mighty monolith has no credibility, and collegiate justice has been left in the hands of the schools themselves. Results can and do vary.
Georgia took the charges against Gurley so seriously that it sat its best player for a big game. In 2009, Georgia Tech chose not to sit Demaryius Thomas — said to have received $312 worth of clothing — against Georgia and then against Clemson in the ACC title tilt, and the Jackets wound up forfeiting their dearly won championship.
Last week Florida suspended quarterback Treon Harris, who was being investigated for sexual assault. (The accuser soon dropped the charges, leading to his reinstatement.) This served as a stark contrast to Florida State’s handling of Winston, who didn’t miss a game last season despite being investigated for sexual battery — no charges were filed — and didn’t miss a football game this season after being cited in April for shoplifting crab legs from Publix. (He was suspended from the baseball team, for which he also plays.)
It was only after Winston was heard shouting an objectionable catchphrase in the student union that FSU higher-ups were shamed into suspending him for a half and then the entire game against Clemson. Winston still faces a hearing into possible violations of the student code regarding the the sexual-battery allegations, and now the school is checking into his autographs.
Given FSU’s longstanding less-than-rigid sense of propriety, we shouldn’t expect their sleuthing to uncover much. But that’s what happens when there’s big money on the table — millions for TV networks and conferences and commissioners and coaches — for everyone except the guys doing the playing. That’s what happens when the central authority has no moral authority. That’s what happens when a sport famed for its Color and Pageantry is underpinned by hypocrisy.
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