After a slew of scandals rocked the NCAA last year, the orgizination has decided to crack down and stiffen the penalties handed out to programs and their coaches. How will this change college sports, and how will it affect sports bettors?
May 17 the NCAA
announced there will be new stiff penalties that may call for the suspension of
a head coach whose assistants commit violations, as well as a fine for a
university up to five percent of its annual athletic budget, according to
proposals discussed Monday at the Atlantic Coast Conference spring meetings.
We'll take a look and see how this will affect sports bettors as a whole.
They may have as well
called this the "Jerry Sandusky Rule", as that seems where this is all
stemming from. As we all know, Sandusky was accused of child abuse which
resulted in Joe Paternos firing. Also one of college basketballs all time great
coaches, Hall of Famer, Jim Boeheims assistant also had a similar issue as well, and
was promptly fired. The comittee is now saying
that any rules violations or cheating committed by assistant coaches, they and
the head coach will be held accountable as well, regardless if the head coach
knew of the situation or not, essentially making the head coach responsible for
all of his coaches actions.
Often in college
basketball, recruiting is done by the entire staff and not just the head coach.
Assistants are always visiting recruits homes and trying to convince them to
come to their univeristy. This is big, because if these assisants cut any
corners at all, then the entire program suffers and is immediatly under
fire, instead of just the assistant being penalized. This leads to a dangerous trickle down, and one that could possibly leading to players not wanting to come to that
particular program any more. When these violations are made, scholarship
reductions could be as high as 50 percent, while in much more serious cases a
death penalty may be administered for one year.
As if college
basketball coaches already don't have enough on their plate trying to build a
team, while players are going one and done, they now basically have to take on
another huge responsiblity in policing their entire staff for in fear there are
no rules broken. This rule could possibly affect defending National Champion
coach John Calipari the most, as he is always under scrutiny of cheating.
Calipari, has had players under him such as Derek Rose, who had someone else
take the SAT's for him to ensure that he would be eligible
to play college ball.
Another player who played under
Calipari, Eric Bledsoe was also exposed for academic issues in high school, and
dating all the way back to Calipari's UMASS days, there was always suspicion with
superstar Marcus Camby walking around with tons of "blinged out"
jewelry and shiny new cars, but Calipari has never officially been nailed for
any major violation. Maybe one of the reasons he has never been issued serious
penalties is cause he has his assistants do the dirty work?
Thanks to the new rules that are being set in place, if the assisants
are busted, Calipari is now guilty by association. This leads him to face stiff penalties, could cause him to be replaced as the team's coach, and also force the program to sit out of the recruiting process altogether. In a world where college basketball recruiting
is known as a very sketchy business, it must now be squeeky clean, and we could see a
lot of programs and coaches facing multipule violations this year.
As far as this pertains to NCAA Basketball bettors, as if gambling isn't already hard
enough, this makes makes it even harder to predict future winers. When and if these violations are laid
down, how are we going to adjust to capping games, when coaches aren't able to
coach their team, or recruit the players they want, or certain players are
suspended? It throws a complete monkey wrench into the world of capping.
Though
the head coach gets most of the face time, the assistants have just as big as
an effect on the way the team performs as well. We are not at the practices or video
session so we have no idea which assistant is superior to the others. So again,
if one is banned for a few games, we have no ideal how poorly this could effect
the team in terms of their style of play. Until we see how this fully folds out
and the first suspensions are handed out, it will be business as usual for
bettors, but once that first violation is smacked onto a top program, things will change. The public loves to bet big name schools, and we all know that they will be the ones watched most closely.