Lawsuit: NCAA Failed Athletes by Letting them Cheat?
SIAP: I did a site search and found nothing.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/22/us/unc-paper-classes-lawsuit/index.html
Students who took part in the UNC Papergate scandal are now suing both UNC and the NCAA in a class action suit claiming that they were cheated out of an education.
I'm firmly in the camp that these athletes shoudl be ppaid something - mostly because what they are doing is their job - essentially an internship - many of which are paid. They don't develop the infrastructure, so no need to cut them in on a percentage - but some sort of pay for the work they put in. But this story confuses the hell out of me.
Certian parties valued football over education, and attempted to obviate rules in order to make football better - in large part, to try and generate revenues, sure. But both the school and the NCAA itself have strict anti-cheating policies and punishments. This will have to get thrown out, won't it? There is no evidence at all to show that the NCAA's structure is designed to do anything but prevent and discourage cheating.
January 22nd, 2015 at 10:57 PM ^
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:12 PM ^
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January 22nd, 2015 at 11:14 PM ^
sounds good Penn State had to give millions of dollars to a child sexual abuse agency. UNC should have to give millions for their past athletes of all sports to come back to school. I'm of the belief that the punishments should fit the crime.
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:30 PM ^
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:38 PM ^
is only hurting the cheater. The degree represents being educated, but cheating counters that. So they chose not to be educated.
January 23rd, 2015 at 12:15 AM ^
January 23rd, 2015 at 11:31 AM ^
This is twice as true since these were non-technical classes/degrees... the name on top of the paper means a lot more than the words below it.
But I'm in the 'its your fault, you cheated!' camp, so I think this lawsuit is absurd.
January 23rd, 2015 at 5:58 AM ^
So these kids couldn't figure out that a course with the reputation of doing almost no work was maybe not the same as physical chemistry?
I'm normally not unsympathetic to student athletes, but there should be some element of personal responsibility for the course selection these plantiffs exercised. I'm sure there were many student athtletes who opted for degree programs and course selections where a good academic outcome would be ensured if you put in the work.
I guess the question is did UNC make these kids the victims or was it something of the student athlete's own choosing?
January 23rd, 2015 at 7:36 AM ^
into these classes when their GPAs dipped too low. I am guessing that is their angle.
That said, I completely agree with the athlete's do shoulder a most of the accountability - they knew what they were doing.
January 23rd, 2015 at 10:00 AM ^
Having studied engineering, and knowing in HS that I was headed towards a technical discipline might have skewed my perspective a bit, and perhaps I am overreaching. But student athelete are still students, and if they are that unaware of the courses they are taking, it does make one pause and ask questions about NCAA and UNC's admission standards.
January 23rd, 2015 at 1:27 AM ^
January 22nd, 2015 at 10:58 PM ^
I am happy to see that some athletes "get it;" UNC didn't do them any "favors" by giving them a worthless degree for no work.
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:01 PM ^
But the suit claims that the NCAA's model is complicit in that - designed to encourage that, in fact. Hence the "Class Action".. Do you really think athletes at most schools are encouraged to cheat their way through to stay eligible - and more importantly, that the NCAA is set up in such a way as to promote this?
January 23rd, 2015 at 7:46 AM ^
by using the UNC case as the primary example. That said the UNC case is an extreme example of the reality that in many cases kids who are below the curve academically are brought in and given significant mandatory and voluntary sport expectations and are advised in some way to pursue degree paths with less rigor in order to stay academically elligible.
The NCAA at the very least allows this environment to exist.
January 23rd, 2015 at 8:40 AM ^
the NCAA? They have raised minimum standards to qualify more than once. Those efforts have met a lot of resistance from advocates for students who would find themselves at an academic disadvantage. They put in place penalties for schools that do a poor job of graduating their players. Those requirements are getting stricter, too. They've put in place guidelines about making progress towards a degree to remain eligible. Remember the class load Andy Katzenmoyer took? Can they also micromanage the choice of majors? Is it ever going to be realistic to have significant numbers of those less prepared students pursue the most rigorous majors?
Lord knows it's easy to find fault with the NCAA, but they have been making a consistent effort to see that athletes get a real education. Hopefully they'll strengthen their case by coming down hard on UNC.
January 23rd, 2015 at 8:45 AM ^
Best post in this thread.
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:03 PM ^
The players chose to cheat. Seems pretty simple to me.
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:03 PM ^
TAKE RESPONSIBILTY FOR YOUR OWN ACTIONS!!
January 23rd, 2015 at 11:34 AM ^
But... if you do that, who are you supposed to blame? This doesn't make any sense at all!
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:11 PM ^
My question would not be on the evidence showing the stucture is in place, it would be on the actual enforcement.
Miami is still going strong after their problems, UNC is doing fine last time I checked.
It appears the NCAA is set up to discourage and prevent cheating, they just don't actually do it unless you are USC and you piss them off. See any deep dives into the bagman scandal in the SEC? Didn't Oregon pay a scouting service $25k to help steer them kids he mentored? Nothing ever came of that.
Given the OSU case, PSU case, Miami case, UNC case, etc.. the risk vs reward equation strongly favors taking the risk. What was it 3 years ago that OSU had tatgate? Their head coach got a show cause penalty by lying and they are currently national champs.
If there is a case I hope it succeeds, mot necessarily because I think the kids are blameless,but maybe it could force the NCAA to actually enforce the rules. Wishful thinking I know.
No lawyer, but if the case set a precedent? Once again not a lawyer, but anything that forces the the current NCAA structure to go bye bye, I am fine with.
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:55 PM ^
If there is a case I hope it succeeds, mot necessarily because I think the kids are blameless,but maybe it could force the NCAA to actually enforce the rules.That's a foolish reason to want a case to succeed. That's like a judge who tells a man, "I think you had good intentions and didn't mean to break the law, but I want to send a message, so you get 10 years." A case should only succeed on the merit of the case. If the NCAA needs better enforcement of their anti-cheating rules, then so be it. But deciding a case in favor of those who don't deserve the victory to send a message is wrong.
January 23rd, 2015 at 10:50 AM ^
First off they were students and 18 years old so they should get some minor protection. But I agree they knew what they were doing and took advantage of it.
However, look at Texas vs Johnson, the supreme court case where a guy burned a flag. He was convicted of desecration and got one year in jail. He sued and supreme court overturned it because of the first amendment.
This guy is an idiot and should rot in hell. But the greater evil, in my opinion, would be damage to the first amendment.
Extreme case I know, but that is what I am getting at is that I will take the lesser evil of these kids suing to get at the bigger evil of the NCAA.
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:13 PM ^
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:22 PM ^
This a clear violation of your rights as a student. It's an infringement on your constitutional rights. It's outrageous, egregious, preposterous.
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:27 PM ^
January 23rd, 2015 at 1:45 AM ^
There were allegations back in 2008 that there were bogus independent study courses for student athletes at Michigan. "
"The average grade for 21 athletes who took 32 graded courses from Hagen, 25 of them independent studies, was 3.62. Those athletes had a grade point average of 2.57 in their other classes, according to transcripts reviewed by the newspaper."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/sports/ncaafootball/17michigan.html?_…
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:28 PM ^
These are probably the same people who are living off food stamps/obama phones/etc. They don't care about an education, they just want something else for free ($$$).
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:38 PM ^
now I know everything I will ever need to know about you. There are other sites for your kind of pearls of wisdom. Just not here.
January 23rd, 2015 at 1:01 AM ^
Some comment(s) got deleted I hope, otherwise I'm very confused about all the hostility.
January 23rd, 2015 at 1:22 AM ^
a comment (from some neanderthal using Tom Brady's wife as his username) was deleted. Nothing to see, as he was spouting garbage about food stamps/free handouts, Obama, and other hot-button idiocy commonly heard on syndicated talk radio.
He quickly gathered a slew of downvotes and appropriate comments picking apart the garbage he was spewing, then got deleted and (I'm hoping) sent off to Bolivia.
January 23rd, 2015 at 1:41 AM ^
January 23rd, 2015 at 3:34 PM ^
the comment, or whatever it was, was properly deleted. I guess I'll have to start checking up on my posts.
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:45 PM ^
Wow, you dropped a zinger there.
/s
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:46 PM ^
I, and probably a decent portion of this board, lean a little right - but - are you posting from a self-sufficient "compound" muttering that those dirty democrats aren't gonna get their paws on your diploma?
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:50 PM ^
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:50 PM ^
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:30 PM ^
for devaluing their diplomas
January 22nd, 2015 at 11:53 PM ^
January 23rd, 2015 at 12:18 AM ^
January 23rd, 2015 at 1:39 AM ^
To me this is like suing your doctor because you didn’t follow the FDA “food pyramid” and got fat. Doesn’t really make sense to me.
January 23rd, 2015 at 7:29 AM ^
The NCAA did not encourage the cheating! It is my understanding when this first broke it started an NCAA investigation into the allegations of the cheating scandal that the students voluntarily took part in.
Too Many Frivolous Lawsuits in this country! I can't even take this one serious!
January 23rd, 2015 at 7:55 AM ^
January 23rd, 2015 at 8:18 AM ^
it sounds to me as though the system they went through was set up for cheating, and they just went along. That speaks to more than just the students' ethics.
If the NCAA is taking on the responsiblity to ensure that student-athletes are getting a good education, then their enforcement policy needs to be more than waiting for a whistleblower to pop up. It's not like they don't have the funds for enforcement. My understanding is that the whistleblower is the one that gets punished as well. It's a bad system that needs to be fixed.
It may be that the judicial system is the only way to enforce change. If so, then I approve of the lawsuit.
January 23rd, 2015 at 10:04 AM ^
I don't see causation or injury here. Help me out, MGoLawyers.
January 23rd, 2015 at 10:14 AM ^