Subscribe Feed (RSS)Rich Rodriguez is in a peck of trouble at Michigan, mostly because he went 3-9 last season — which is causing people to come out of the woodwork to cause him problems.
Now I have no feelings about Rodriquez, either way, but I’d say this: There isn’t a successful Division I program in the country that could stand up to serious scrutiny about how much time its players spend practicing — in season or out.
The NCAA mandates 20 hours a week, which doesn’t begin to cover the amount of time these kids spend in and around football. The summer “voluntary” workout program is a joke. You have entire teams choosing to spend their summer in some little college town working out together, as a squad. If you’ve ever seen some of these workouts, you’d know that while coaches aren’t there, they are behind the scenes pulling the strings.
You can say that in exchange for a scholarship at a school like Michigan, a student-athlete ought to be willing to work hard, like a full-time job. That’s fine — then don’t make any rules about practice time. But the sad thing is, if you don’t make those rules, the practices would NEVER stop.
The ridiculously deceptive world of big-time college sports rolls on. And it isn’t going to change, folks. And I guess that’s fine. Just understand what it’s about. And a lot of time it’s not pretty.
Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Michigan, NCAA, Rich Rodriguez
While I agree with you in priciple I do have one argument. If they took away the “20 hour” rules, the practices would not go on forever. Even in the NFL they still stop practice at some point!
The NCAA is a two-faced organization, we all know that. They are all about money, and could care less about their “student-athletes”. But like so many things in this world, once you get too many people’s opinions involved in the decision making process it all bogs down, and nothing gets done.
Oh that and people are greedy and want alot of money for themselves.
Hurry Duck fans tell us how your program would never do that!
personally i don’t know why the ncaa has to mandate how much time a team can spen practicing per week. 20 hrs! hells bells i spent more time practicing than that in high school per week. and whats more, there is no school in the country that limits their practice time to 20 hrs. it would be impossible to put in a 100 page + play book in only 20 hrs of practice per week and know all of the schemes and sets, and where to go and who to hit and which hole to run to. i know that practice time can and does interfere with scolastics and classes but these kids are in college to play football not get an education. don’t ever kid yourselves, college atheletes are not (for the most part) worried about life after college because even the lowest 3-4th stringer on the team just knows he’s gonna play on sundays in the nfl and get paid millions and millions of dollars…who needs an education?!?!?!
With as much money as there is on the line in college football, programs are always going to be flirting with, and crossing the lines when it comes to the rules. If they say 30 hours a week is maximum, then some programs are going to feel like they are not keeping up unless they are putting in 32. Then if they raise the limit to 40 because “everyone is doing more then 30 anyway”, they’ll start doing 42 or 45. It will never end as long as the reward for winning is a multi-million dollar contract for the head coach.
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but I almost would like to see the NCAA say “ok, anything goes”. It would be interesting to see how many athletes would think that it’s worth it to spend 80 hours per week on football, and how many would opt for a more reasonable approach at a different school. I tend to think that the market would take care of this program by itself. I think a large number of athletes would say “to heck with spending 80 hours a week for football at School A when I can get the same education spending 25 hours at School B.
The remarkable thing about this news story isn’t about how wrong what RichRod did was.
It is that ten current and former players were so ready to throw their coach and athletic director under the bus to get crushed.
We all should know that this is really about the MONEY!
The desire to make a profit has layers to it, like an onion; first it causes blurry eyed moralists to make up rules for appearance sake, and then as the onion continues to be peeled, an even foggier vision ends up causing many of the rules not to be enforced so that a better product can be put on the field. This double vision is now rationalized as a, “necessary evil.”
When the “public” gets wind of “rules violations” then the governing body must step in and unevenly enforce the arbitrary rules in order too maintain the designated dignity of the sport. It is sort of like having a designated driver at a party.
This system keeps the profits from being killed on the way home to the university coffers, and maintains the illusion for the people that it is still safe and moral to drink as much of the spiked cool aid as they want.
A great many people win. They feel good about what they get out of this system. The main problem I have is the question of whether the players are being properly compensated for their time and talents. To me, this is where the real, “moral issue,” is being swept out of sight in a shell game of sorts. As the old saying goes, “Follow the money!”
Good take, Dwight. Incidentally, as a UM Alum, they’re probably the one of the few programs where the players would come out and say something about this. Lloyd Carr followed the rules to a “T”, and the practices were truly “voluntary” in every sense of the word. The Carr coaching staff never came close to any perceived violations be it practice time, recruiting, payment, etc. He was somewhat unique in the landscape of big-time college football. Not saying one was better than the other – it is what it is. So, it’s quite a shock to the players when RichRod comes in and they feel pressured to take place in these “voluntary” workouts. There is a lot of internal division within the UM football program between the traditionalists and those who want the program to compete at the highest levels.