Wednesday's Skull Session will offer some commentary on things happening in the world of college athletics. It was certainly eventful day yesterday with the release of the sanctions imposed on the University of Miami for its involvement with Nevin Shapiro. We'll get to that later in the session.
For now, let's look over the newest depth chart for the Penn State game.
NEW DEPTH CHART RELEASED. Ohio State released its latest depth chart yesterday afternoon, just days before Ohio State hosts Penn State in the primetime lights of Ohio Stadium. There is one noticeable change.
Tommy Schutt, who made his season debut last week against Iowa, is now listed as a backup nose tackle to Michael Bennett. If you recall, Schutt's entry into the game last Saturday against Iowa was one of rotating injuries. Schutt was sidelined for the first six games of the season with a broken bone in his foot.
The injury, which happened near the very end of August, was going to sideline Schutt for six to eight weeks. Lo and behold, that coincided with Ohio State's first bye of the season and the game week for Iowa.
Schutt was ready to go, but got his first play of the season when Michael Bennett had to go to the bench with an injury. Bennett's injury is nothing major. He's been nursing a sore arm for several weeks, which is why the astute Ohio State fan will notice the rather large brace Bennett wears during games. Right now, Bennett's injury is manageable and he is playing through it. I think the ailment is derivative of the broken arm that Bennett suffered at the U.S. Army All-American Bowl in 2011.
That's about it for changes on the depth chart. One item I've been watching for a few weeks is the weakside defensive end rotation. The battle for playing time between Jamal Marcus and Steve Miller may be the most interesting position battle for which most fans of the team are not watching. I think Marcus is getting more playing time right now than Miller, which may so more about how well Marcus is performing relative to Miller. However, there is no official change on the depth chart. Both are listed as "OR" behind the Noah Spence.
Kenny Guiton is still the first team holder.
MIAMI'S SANCTIONS COME DOWN. THEY'RE NOT MUCH. In what was the college football news of the day, the NCAA finally announced sanctions for the University of Miami owing to its involvement with Nevin Shapiro, a university and program booster currently serving time in a federal prison for running a Ponzi scheme. The scandal had clouded the Hurricanes program for the past three seasons.
The scandal itself dates to 2011, when Ohio State fans were having to endure the "Tatgate" scandal that brought down Tressel. The accusations that Nevin Shapiro made against the program for which he was then a booster, combined with the corroborating evidence that Yahoo! Sports investigative team could muster, made it the "10" (of 10) bombshell scandal that Charles Robinson advertised.
While Yahoo! Sports promoted the allegations against Miami as a 10/10 on a hypothetical scale of sports scandal sensationalism, and some of the charges against Miami were certainly sensationalistic (e.g. abortions for prostitutes provided by Shapiro to Miami student-athletes), the ultimate sanctions belie every bit of the scandal's nature. Miami, which has sat out the last two post-seasons, will not sit out another post-season. It will be docked three scholarships per year for the next three years (which Ohio State got for its scandal). There was also a ticket restriction for players on unofficial visits, though that point is minor.
There were a few other items of note. The basketball team lost a scholarship a year for the next three years. Three former Miami assistants were all show-caused for two years. Aubrey Hill, who was one of them, ended his brief tenure as an assistant coach with his alma mater (Florida) after the 2012 season.
Clint Hurtt, who coaches the defensive line for the Louisville Cardinals, may apparently still coach at Louisville. Frank Haith, who was the head coach of Miami basketball at that time, will sit out five games this season as the current head coach of the Missouri Tigers.
And that's it. So much for Yahoo! Sports' "10".
The news of Miami's announcement on Monday night, followed with the actual announcement this morning, was met with something approaching a yawn on my end. I was past the point of caring a few years ago. Still, I think there are a few points worth hammering home about the conclusion of the Nevin Shapiro scandal.
I think college sports fans great overestimate the extent of power the NCAA has. This may be an image that the NCAA cultivated for itself after rocking Oklahoma in various stretches in the 1970s-1980s, nuking Southern Methodist in the 1980s, putting Ohio State's entire athletic department on a postseason ban in the 1950s, blasting then-juggernaut Washington and Miami at the height of its dominance in the early 1990s, and removing Auburn from television outright in the early 1990s, even for an undefeated season. These are just examples. Fans confuse the NCAA for law enforcement, even if they are quick to note the NCAA lacks subpoena power.
The truth is the NCAA's enforcement mechanism is less a courtroom trial, and more marketplace haggling. It's less crime and punishment as you may see on a courtroom television channel, and more what you might see a buyer and seller doing when they argue over the price of a good. It's precisely because the NCAA lacks subpoena power that it actually puts itself at the mercy of the program it's investigating when trying to set a punishment level. College athletic departments nowadays know this.
If a target program, especially one that is a private institution not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests, wants to obfuscate the investigative process, it can. If it believes the NCAA is tripping over its own microscopic wang, as the NCAA did when it was using subpoena powers it did not have to pry information second-hand in the overlapping investigation into Shapiro's Ponzi scheme, it can choose to not cooperate.
This puts the burden on the NCAA, not the target program. This is also all bargaining over the price of a good, not crime and punishment.
In short, Miami had the NCAA over a barrel and not the other way around. Did you notice that Miami said it was not going to appeal? That was a very clear tell that the NCAA was worried about a lawsuit from Miami because of its extrajudicial investigation of the Yahoo Sports! report. It had to soften the sanctions accordingly. Miami was likely going to sue because it did not believe punishment would fit what NCAA could prove to be the crime.
That is: the NCAA could not prove that the disputed good costs what it says it costs, and could not convince Miami of it. This is bargaining. For its part, the University of Miami, mindful of its own costs, and projected costs, in pursuing the matter further, accepted the reduced sanctions.
Nevertheless, I was not invested in Miami's scandal when we finally got our verdict for "Tatgate", nor do I care now. It is why I yawned at the idea we would finally learn about what would happen to Miami, and why I found Michael's interpretation of it funny. I care more that Ohio State never has to endure 2011 again than I do that the NCAA sends Miami to its maker to keep other programs on the straight and narrow.
That said, I think we're past the point of no return. I can already envision legal counsel for athletic departments thinking in ways to do what Miami did, but not repeat its errors. The strategic logic for a commitment level to cheating is already there, and big athletic departments are in a better position to pull it off today than a program like Southern Methodist was in the 1980s. Big athletic departments have more resources now than Southern Methodist did in the 1980s, and the NCAA is hemorrhaging resolve and reputation.
Make no mistake. This is a critical juncture in the history of the NCAA.
Final point: when in doubt, ALWAYS self-impose. Always. If Gene Smith's idea was that the NCAA was always going to give a bowl ban to Ohio State for 2012, he missed the point of what the NCAA does. He misunderstood the nature of the bargaining process. That much is disconcerting (wasn't that supposed to be his specialty?).
However, it is worth repeating that I care more that it doesn't happen again. 2011 sucked out loud.
Manziel's Saturday was less than pleasant. MANZIEL UNCERTAIN FOR NEXT GAME. The big no. 3 vs. no. 5 matchup between Clemson and Florida State dominated headlines for Saturday's slate of games. Certainly, the way that Florida State humiliated Clemson in Clemson's own place made it the talking point of the entire weekend, even if Saturday also included an undefeated program like UCLA falling to the Stanford Cardinal.
Maybe the secondary story of Saturday, subtle as it may be, was actually in College Station. In a battle of one-loss teams, Auburn ventured into College Station and defeated the Aggies 45-41. That Auburn hung 45 points on Texas A&M suggests that the Tigers simply outscored the Aggies in that contest to escape with a win.
Combined with some other losses for programs like LSU, Auburn and Alabama now control their destinies in the SEC West.
While it's true the game can be characterized as a "shootout", it does belie how Auburn concluded the game: with a red zone defensive stand against Texas A&M. Gary Danielson, in particular, made considerable references to Gus Malzahn liberally substituting nine defensive linemen during the course of the game. The idea was to make sure that unit was fresh against a Texas A&M offensive line by the end of the game.
It worked. Auburn's defensive line roughed up Johnny Manziel in stretches through that game before ending A&M's final possession on a fourth-down sack.
Manziel, who is still a viable Heisman candidate despite Texas A&M's two losses on the season, was hurt rather badly in that game. There was a point where he could not even throw a football because the shoulder upon which he was planted following a sack was too sore to move. Kevin Sumlin, right now, is uncertain that he will play in Texas A&M's next game.
"I would list him as hopeful," Sumlin said Tuesday. "That's where he is right now."
Sumlin wouldn't go into details about the injury but did say that Manziel was wearing a sling as a precautionary measure during Monday's practice. He said Manziel will continue to receive treatment throughout the week.
[...]
If Manziel is unable to play, the Aggies will turn to junior Matt Joeckel or freshman Kenny Hill against Vandy.
"We feel confident in both of those guys," offensive coordinator Clarence McKinney said. "It's a different team when Johnny's out there and it's a different team when those guys are out there."
Sumlin said the rotation of quarterbacks at practice could change depending on how much Manziel is able to participate in the coming days.
While Manziel is a viable candidate to do what only Archie Griffin has done to this point (win two Heismans consecutively), this season felt like he was going to be just outpaced by Marcus Mariota or, now, Jameis Winston come December. If he has to miss the next game, that might effectively end his Heisman campaign.
A&M's next opponent is Vanderbilt. It's not quite clear to me he will be needed anyway.
MISCELLANY. Don't like Pro Combat or "rivalry" uniforms? Well, Ohio State is going to wear them Saturday... Cardale Jones endures as a cautionary tale on tweeting for freshmen at the University of Mississippi... This Week in Schadenfreude... Unlocking the mysteries of what makes Baylor's offense ludicrous... Pat Fitzgerald's "yellow card" idea is not new to this week, and he's been right all along... The newest episode of BTN's The Journey will feature Ryan Shazier... Feel good: a back-up Northwestern basketball player receives a scholarship... An amputee Paralympian athlete has all the best Halloween costume ideas... A soccer team in Colombia forgets to bring its away kits; has to play in cheap knockoffs provided by a street merchant... Look at who's at the bottom of the Pac-12 recruiting rankings... Best moments of this year's ALCS and NLCS, animated in Legos... Penn State's depth chart, for your consideration... World Series between the Cardinals and Red Sox begins tonight at 8:07 p.m. on FOX.
