There's a Storm A Brewin'

Nevin Shapiro with a former Miami football player

After three long years of intense investigation, the NCAA has finally reached an agreement on how to punish the University of Miami for committing, "...a wide array of the most serious violations in the NCAA Division 1 Manual", according to Ivan Maisel of ESPN's recent report. 

These violations include:

• Bylaw 11, involving impermissible compensation to coaches;
• Bylaw 12, involving amateurism of athletes;
• Bylaw 13, involving improper recruiting activity; and
• Bylaw 16, involving extra benefits to athletes

In addition, former Miami athletics booster Nevin Shapiro, pictured above, was accused of giving a large portion of these benefits to players in the form of nights out to clubs, cash, and other expensive gifts.  At the time the initial report came out in 2011, NCAA president Mark Emmert said, "If they're found to be true, it appears we've had a third-party individual have a really pernicious impact on a huge cross-section of student-athletes. The breadth of that would be pretty shocking."

Yet when the NCAA finally issued its punishments upon the University of Miami, the country was shocked at how little Miami will actually be affected for committing some of the biggest violations in the history of college athletics.  Their punishment is the reduction of nine football scholarships and three basketball scholarships over the next three years.  That's it. So for years of repetitive violations of the rules of the NCAA, Miami will lose having a few of their benchwarmers in each sport be on scholarship.

In its defense, the NCAA has said that the reason for seemingly soft penalty is that the University of Miami was cooperative with the investigation, and also gave itself a two year bowl ban.  While that is a slightly significant penalty, it seems like the punishment could have been somewhere around a 6 year bowl ban with seven scholarships removed a year instead of three.

The NCAA has no regulations on how they do their investigations and punishments, and this is just another example at the injustice that the NCAA has served college sports for years.  Something needs to be done sooner or later, or else the world of college sports could be in the midst of a colossal revolution.

What do you think needs to be done to fix the broken system of the NCAA?  What do you think Miami's punishment should have been?