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Thursday, February 05, 2015
Timing is Everything
Syracuse imposed sanctions on itself, meaning the men's basketball team will not play in the postseason this year.
The timing of this is pretty good as the team was not likely to make the NCAA Tournament and had a significant chance of missing the NIT as well.
So far this season SU is 6-3 in the ACC but 4 of those wins came against teams with only one conference win and 5 games against top 10 teams remain (Louisville, Virginia, Notre Dame and Duke twice).
So Syracuse elected to take the minor pain now and hope to avoid more serious sanctions when the team is better next year.
The victim here is Rakim Christmas who obviously was not involved in any of the behavior being punished, all of which happened before 2012, and some of which dates back to 2007.
Although it hasn't yet been made abundantly clear what violations SU is telling on itself for.
How does this make me feel as an alumnus and ardent supporter of the team? Kind of bad.
Unfortunately, every single major program breaks the rules. I guess there's a kind of moral relativism in me being willing to accept misdemeanors, so long as there aren't recruiting or payment "felonies" included in this.
I think as an alum you should be proud that they're taking responsibility like this. For a good contrast, look at the way UNC has handled a far more serious scandal - basically deny, deny, deny, and then delay responding. It makes them look terrible and likely hurts recruiting as well.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad because I hate Carolina, but I respect what Syracuse is doing. Just like I respect them for kicking Fab Melo off the team despite hurting their championship chances, and I feel similarly about Coach K dismissing his best defensive player recently.
There is nothing noble here. I don't believe the accepting of responsibility is genuine.
ReplyDeleteI think they are doing it because they know they can either jump or get pushed.
I also don't believe this will discourage similar behavior in the future because minor infractions of this type occur everywhere all the time.
They'll just try harder not to get caught next time.
Right, but it looks better from a PR standpoint to take responsibility and give yourself the punishment as opposed to falsely proclaiming innocence while knowing you're likely to get punished.
ReplyDeleteI agree about this not discouraging similar conduct.
I think LuAnn got caught taking Bobby Collins' (Fab Melo) test.
ReplyDeleteWhen's the last time you saw 40,000 people show up to watch a kid take a damn chemistry experiment?
They are taking responsibility after self reporting which is kinda noble. Not sure how much they've been fighting NCAA and this is certainly opportune for SU.