Tennessee football recruiting investigation, conference expansion show NCAA's irrelevance | Adams
The recent decision by UCLA and Southern California to abandon the Pac-12 in favor of the Big Ten was preceded by a heads-up letter via certified mail in which they informed the NCAA of their decision to change conferences.
Just kidding. Of course, there was no such letter. Never mind that the NCAA is rumored to be the governing body of college athletics. It’s nothing more than a bystander when schools hop from one league to another.
That’s just another reminder of the NCAA’s dwindling significance. As conferences shuffle teams at a dizzying pace, this thought never crosses the mind of university administrators: “Should we run this by the NCAA?”
Once the Big Ten and SEC add enough teams to reach super-conference status, the NCAA will become useless. Super conferences can administer themselves. And they can do it better.
They can make their own rules, then enforce them in a fair and swift manner. The NCAA too often has been neither fair nor swift.
The NCAA’s lack of urgency again has been apparent in the case of Tennessee.
For a year and a half, UT’s football program has been under investigation for recruiting violations. It has been drawn out for so long that former coach Jeremy Pruitt has had time to lose a second job – with the New York Giants – since being fired for mismanaging Tennessee’s program at a historical level.
No one expects sudden results from the NCAA, whose motto might as well be “haste makes waste.” But even for a group that invariably crawls its way to conclusions, its sluggish pace has been stunning in this instance.
The exhausting process of fact finding isn’t an excuse. UT did most of the legwork, after which school chancellor Donde Plowman made it painfully clear the program had gone off the NCAA rails with Pruitt at the wheel.
Following UT’s internal investigation, Pruitt and nine staff members were fired in January 2021. Athletics director Phillip Fulmer’s exit was mercifully characterized as “a retirement.”
Plowman blew the whistle on her program and dismissed the perpetrators. Then, she brought in the replacements, headlined by AD Danny White and football coach Josh Heupel.
Heupel revived the football program in his first season, and the entire athletics department is on the ascent under White. So, the mess Pruitt left behind should be nothing more than a bad memory.
Yet the NCAA investigation drags on with seemingly no end in sight. Perhaps, ineptitude isn’t to blame. Maybe, the NCAA infractions committee forgot to put Tennessee on its calendar.
But UT won’t see the humor in that – not when it already has been punished. How could the possibility of NCAA probation not have adversely affected Heupel’s first recruiting class?
That should be punishment enough for a program that unearthed its own violations, cleaned house and threw itself on the mercy of the NCAA court.
Nonetheless, the prolonged investigation at least has reminded us why the NCAA no longer should be in the enforcement business. Let the conferences or super conferences do it.
And let the NCAA just go away, preferably at a faster pace than its investigative process.
John Adams is a senior columnist. He may be reached at 865-342-6284 or john.adams@knoxnews.com. Follow him at: twitter.com/johnadamskns.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Tennessee football recruiting investigation shows NCAA irrelevant
