Petrino's Cold-Bloodedness Exposes Yet Another NCAA Flaw

While The Great Gatsby is perhaps the exemplar of The Great American Novel, its author's most quotable utterance was about as un-American as an Old Glory-burning in the streets of Tehran. When F. Scott Fitzgerald exclaimed that "there are no second acts in America lives," he was possibly depressed or drunk (or both), but he most certainly was mistaken.  The pursuit of the American Dream is a long and bumpy ride, filled with challenge, adversity and loss.  Not only does our country have a rich and deep history of comeback stories, our national culture revels in their redemptive power. Many of our nation's greatest heroes, indeed, were once humiliated politicians, athletes and entertainers who picked themselves up, appealed for forgiveness, and courageously re-embarked on successful career paths.  Hey, I've even launched a web site and a crisis management business committed to proving Fitz wrong, and dedicated to the notion that everyone deserves a second chance. So last year, when the University of Louisville ignited a firestorm of controversy by re-hiring their once-disgraced football coach, Bobby Petrino, I broke with much of the Big Blue Nation and reserved judgment. (My semi-animus for UK's little brother is reserved for its hoops squad.)  Petrino had certainly earned his reputation as an untrustworthy scoundrel, but we all evolve with age.  And at least one of his early victims -- U of L athletic director Tom Jurich -- saw enough contrition and maturity in Petrino to bring him back to the scene of his crime. And then this Monday, as the nation was recovering from one of history's most exciting Super Bowls, Petrino shattered the shaky foundation of his trustworthiness.  Just 48 hours before National Signing Day, the first time that a high school senior can sign a binding National Letter of Intent with an NCAA football team, Petrino revoked a scholarship offer to three-star running back recruit Matt Colburn, South Carolina's "Mr. Football," who had been committed to Louisville for nearly eight months. What was the cause, you ask?  Career-threatening injury?  Legal violation or school rule infraction?  An exhibition of immaturity or poor character? Nope, not even close.  Petrino was concerned that the Cards had lost too many defensive backs to the NFL draft, so the team needed to use Colburn's scholarship to sign a top cornerback or safety.  (Of course, Louisville -- like the whole football world -- knew for weeks that the DB vacancies were occurring.) Louisville oh-so-generously offered to "gray shirt" Colburn, allowing the running back to delay his enrollment and be part of the 2016 recruiting class.  But -- surprise, surprise, surprise -- the spring graduate isn't interested in a involuntary gap year, so he's left to scramble to identify new suitors among the schools he had already rejected due to the Cardinals' "commitment." There's no question that Colburn will land somewhere; and hopefully he'll find a college with a more compassionate focus on its students.  But there's also no doubt that the eight-month delay denied the halfback many promising opportunities.  And the annual highlight for so many senior high school football stars -- National Signing Day -- has passed without a press conference, or even a celebratory high-five, for Matt Colburn. On a day when the nation mourns the loss of Dean Smith, the legendary Carolina coach who was said to have always put his students' interests first, I'm through excusing Bobby Petrino.  So is Colburn's coach, Tom Knotts, who has banned the Louisville coach from recruiting on his campus.  Here's to hoping other wise high school football programs follow suit. But Petrino's cold-bloodedness exposes something greater than a simple issue of character.  Petrino-gate (or is it Colburn-ghazi?) is merely a symptom of a deeply-diseased NCAA rules regime that places far too little priority on the welfare of the student-athlete. I've already opined about our moral obligation to better compensate college athletes, as well as the current system's failure to provide many of them a meaningful education.   But even those who still hold fast to the Athenian ideal of amateur athletics would find the NCAA rulebook filled with regulations that are both hypocritical and disturbingly anti-student, such as:

• A coach like Petrino can jump a contract and coach a new school the next year, while a player who chooses to transfer to a more fitting institution and program must sit out a season -- unless he finds a generous-hearted coach to provide him a waiver.
• A coach like Petrino can be signed to a long-term contract and still earn pay in years after which he had been fired for poor leadership, while a college athlete's scholarship is renewable every year, and he can be unceremoniously dumped if he underperforms, or if a new coach finds more "suitable" talent.
• And while a coach like Petrino can find himself in a difficult situation if the places in Petrino-gate were reversed -- if Colburn were the one who revoked his letter of intent -- the mere nuisance a coach must endure to fill a vacant position pales in comparison to the life-disrupting crisis a teenager faces when having his career rug pulled out from under him at the last minute.

It's high time that the NCAA engages in extensive reform of its rules and regulations in order to honor its purported mission to place the welfare of his student-athletes as its highest priority.  Transferability without penalty, four-year scholarships that can't be broken without due cause, and the development of inviolable contractual promises between coach and recruit -- these are all simple, common-sense measures that can be adopted without struggle, and ensure the protection of those who should matter the most. Bobby Petrino has blown his second act.  Let's hope that this scandal propels the NCAA and its member institutions to hold more sacred their fiduciary duty to student-athletes, to allow the first acts of these young men and women to fully blossom.