Meyer/Nutt/NCAA

I ready your posts and I've been listening to Finebaum's show where the topic is constantly Cam Newton, the investigation, the practice of oversigning, etc.  We are such fans and therefore so close to college football that we just take it all for granted.  If you step back and look at it from a distance, you would have to say it is the most convuluted, corrupt, and confusing organization in all of sports.  The problem of course is that no one is actually in control.  There's no Roger Goodell or David Stern.  If you wanted to review just a handful of disturbing events from NCAA football of late:

1. Cam Newton's dad is found to have shopped his son for huge sums of money and even though the by-laws read that players will be held responsible for the acts of their family or representatives, he is cleared to play, win the national championship, and will get rich(er) soon.
2. Several important Ohio St. players violate several NCAA rules before their bowl game, yet the Sugar Bowl steps in and Viola, the players are cleared to play.
3. The practice of oversigning, farming players out to JUCO, dropping scholarship players, etc. becomes a hot topic, especially in the SEC where Nick Saban just lost 17 players and signed 24.
4. NCAA coaches are speaking out about the practice of agents approaching their pro prospects in violation of NCAA rules, calling into question the eligibility of their best players.
5. Texas joins with ESPN to start their own TV network where they will market their school all over the country and give them a leg up in recruiting (like they need it).
6. Despite Michigan knowing that Rich-Rod would be completely overhauling the way the Wolverines play, recruiting a totally different type of athlete, and changing their recruiting geographic base, the school drops him 3 years in while he is playing almost exclusively frosh/sophomores.
7. The Big 10 raids the Big 12, the Big East raids the Mountain West, the Mountain West raids the WAC, and on, and on, and on.........

This was just off the top of my head.  College football is completely unmanageable.  Too much money, too little authority, too many schools and commissioners acting on their own.  Meyer's complaints are real, yet he has little credibility given the program he ran and the methods he practiced while recruiting.  The bottom line is the coaches are under such immense pressure that they must and will bend every rule in pursuit of wins.  Until or unless the entire structure and leadership of the sport is changed, the rules will be flaunted and the image of any "cleanliness" in the sport will be nothing more than a joke.

Luckily, we just like football, and like most fans we'll just roll with the lunacy of it, and hope our team can play the "game" well enough to win the games on the field.

S