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By Ryan Phillips
In June 2010, the NCAA hit USC’s football program with the harshest sanctions since SMU received the death penalty in 1985. For years USC fans and administrators have contended that the NCAA was far too harsh in its punishment of the school’s football program as a result of the Reggie Bush scandal.
People close to the school have repeatedly insisted that the NCAA unfairly targeted USC, that the investigation was biased against the university and didn’t produce nearly enough evidence to actually prove its case. On Tuesday, those people were proven right.
Hundreds of internal NCAA emails related to the Bush investigation were unsealed on Tuesday and what they revealed was exactly what we’ve come to expect from the NCAA. The picture painted by the emails is one of a Committee on Infractions that judged USC guilty before the investigation into the Bush matter even started. Then, when no smoking gun existed to prove that USC knew about Bush receiving benefits, the investigators and committee members attacked Todd McNair, the former running backs coach at USC.
McNair is currently suing the NCAA for defamation and that suit was the reason the documents were unsealed.
The nearly 500 pages of documents paint an embarrassing picture of a vindictive investigation that was having issues finding the facts to actually prove USC guilty. Dennis Dodd did a phenomenal job of summing up the main points, so check out what he has to say, or check out some choice cuts below.
– Two non-voting members of the infractions committee made disparaging statements about McNair against proper NCAA procedures. One of those members, Roscoe Howard (a former U.S. attorney) said, “I don’t think this committee should be chained to a (enforcement staff) that has seemed to fall short with this investigation or an institution that has no intention of having us find out what actually happened here. I was insulted by the arguments made by (the) institution and embarrassed by the reaction of the staff.”
Committee liaison Shep Cooper also told the committee that McNair was a “lying morally bankrupt criminal, in my view, and a hypocrite of the highest order.”
Again, this is supposed to be an unbiased investigation based on facts.
– Rodney Uphoff, the NCAA coordinator of appeals repeatedly compared the Bush case to the Oklahoma City bombing.
– In correspondence to committee members, Howard said, “McNair should have all inferences negatively inferred against him…we need not say why we disbelieve him, we only need to let the public, or whomever, know that we do disbelieve him.”
So basically Howard is saying, we don’t have to prove that McNair is a liar, just consistently call him a liar and people will believe it.
McNair’s lawyers have argued that the messages Uphoff and Howard sent to voting members of the committee was in violation of the NCAA’s procedures and influenced their decisions. Howard was only supposed to be an observer in the case, and Uphoff also didn’t have a vote.
– One of the COI members, Eleanor Myers, admitted that investigators “botched” an interview when their facts were completely wrong concerning a phone call between McNair and wanna-be agent Lloyd Lake. That mistake is one of many investigators made where facts were concerned in this case.
– The documents refer to a previous dog-fighting charge against McNair, which is completely unrelated to the USC case and was never included in the investigative file, but was brought up during the committee’s discussions.
– Uphoff also ripped USC’s hiring of lane Kiffin, saying the following: “A failure to sanction USC both in basketball and football rewards USC for swimming with the sharks. Although they all talked about the importance of compliance at the hearing, winning at any cost seems more important.”
(And here’s the kicker) “Paul Dee was brought in at Miami to clean up a program with serious consequences. USC has responded to its problems by bringing in Lane Kiffin. They need a wakeup call that doing things the wrong way will have serious consequences. In light of all the problems at USC, a failure to send a serious message in this case undercuts the efforts to help clean up NCAA sports.”
As far as we know, hiring Lane Kiffin is not an NCAA violation, but Uphoff treats it like one. But first he praised Dee (then the head of the COI) who oversaw a hilariously out of control athletic department at Miami. That makes Uphoff’s statement even more comically ridiculous. Especially considering his opinion was not supposed to hold any water in this case and he was supposed to be a non-voting, silent member of the committee.
– Howard was also not a fan of Kiffin as he said, “Lack of institutional control…(and do we add the hiring of Lane Kiffin?), is a very easy call for me.
-To show just how out there one infractions committee member, Britton Banowsky, thought the investigation was, here is a quote that shows how not everyone was convinced McNair was as awful as he was being painted: “It is challenging for me to make the finding when there is no allegation that he personally was involved in any rules violations or even had specific knowledge of any. That is why this is a tough one. But I will defer to others on it.”
Myers agreed with Banowsky’s assessment, “As Britton says, on this record it is hard to find that (McNair) was ‘involved’ in anything.” Myers also expressed concern that the NCAA’s case against USC wasn’t very strong.
-Meanwhile, Uphoff continued pounding the pavement for tough punishment. He argued against upholding “too high of a burden of proof” and defended “inconsistencies re dates and details about events that spanned over 15 months” in Lake’s story.
Basically he was saying the committee should ignore anything Lake said that didn’t fit their narrative and that the “proof” in the USC case (which some didn’t seem convinced actually existed) shouldn’t be held to the same standard as other cases.
-In case Uphoff hadn’t shown his personal bias enough, he sent an email to Cooper that is simply unbelievable. An excerpt follows: “Obviously this email is only going to you. I haven’t been able to sleep for three nights because I fear the Committee is going to be too lenient on USC on the football violations. I think that would be a huge mistake.”
Remember, Uphoff wasn’t supposed to be expressing his opinion to anyone involved in the process, because he was not involved in the decision making and was not on the Committee on Infractions. The fact that he was directly influencing the proceedings is proof the NCAA’s own rules were being violated.
If those emails weren’t enough for you, there are still 200 of the most inflammatory pages that have yet to be released. What those made public on Tuesday show is that the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions had decided USC was guilty long before an investigation ever took place. Once that investigation had been going on for four years, several members of the COI decided that trying to connect McNair to the situation was the only way they could connect Bush’s actions to anyone at USC. So they targeted him despite a complete lack of evidence.
The investigators and the COI painted McNair as a liar and a “criminal” despite any evidence to prove it. Basically they said they didn’t like him so he must be guilty, never mind that they ruined his life in the process as he has never been able to coach again.
There is more disgusting conduct in the emails and you can read them for yourself here.
USC never denied that Bush violated his status as an amateur and was therefore ineligible. What the school argued was that no one at USC knew about it and when they found out, they acted accordingly. The NCAA needed to prove that someone at USC knew in order to justify a lack of institutional control ruling, so it attacked McNair’s credibility to make him look dirty. Unfortunately, according to some of the COI’s own members, the investigation and the committee did a terrible job, because they didn’t even prove their own case or anything close to it, despite botching interviews and making up facts.
The bottom line is that USC fans and administrators have been right all along: USC football got screwed by an NCAA Committee on Infractions that was biased against the school from the start. After four years of investigating every aspect of the program they could find no evidence of wrongdoing against anyone but Bush, so they went after McNair to help make their case. They failed to make that case, but luckily they weren’t just the investigators, they were also the judges and jury. They proudly nailed USC’s pelt to the wall, never suspecting that the emails about their deliberations would be made public. Now we all know the truth.
I would not be surprised if USC filed one heck of a lawsuit against the NCAA in this one.
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