01-19-2011, 12:46 PM
What was unprecedented about the Cam Newton situation was not that it involved a new issue - namely, whether a player can be held responsible for the sins of a parent. As Lefty noted, the NCAA held for years that, yes, they can.
What was new here was the prospect of an NCAA enforcement action derailing a football national championship run. It\'s one thing for the NCAA to rule that Reggie Bush was ineligible five years later. It\'s quite another for them to end Auburn\'s championship run. Who knows what the consequences of that might have been? Maybe the SEC starts talking about withdrawing from the NCAA. Maybe the whole fiction that the NCAA is built on - that these are amateur student-athletes - starts to come under political pressure. Emmert couldn\'t have known what the ramifications would be, so he just called the dogs off. Principle had nothing to do with it.
What was new here was the prospect of an NCAA enforcement action derailing a football national championship run. It\'s one thing for the NCAA to rule that Reggie Bush was ineligible five years later. It\'s quite another for them to end Auburn\'s championship run. Who knows what the consequences of that might have been? Maybe the SEC starts talking about withdrawing from the NCAA. Maybe the whole fiction that the NCAA is built on - that these are amateur student-athletes - starts to come under political pressure. Emmert couldn\'t have known what the ramifications would be, so he just called the dogs off. Principle had nothing to do with it.