The NCAA shows its true colors

Nothing to see here, move along.

With a similar dismissal, the NCAA provided beneficial and much needed top cover to the University of North Carolina in perhaps the most blatant display of sporting hypocrisy since Wednesday when Lance Armstrong claimed he was still a seven-time Tour de France winner (in case I wasn’t obvious enough, the point I’m trying to make is that there’s a plethora of hypocrisy in sport). Regarding the UNC scandal:

In a class called How To Embarrass Your School Without Getting In Trouble With the NCAA, I give the North Carolina Tar Heels an A-plus. And they don’t even have to write a paper.

The NCAA looked at the UNC scandal and announced that, as in one of the fake UNC classes, there was nothing to see here. No NCAA rules were violated. Of course, Penn State didn’t violate any NCAA rules either, but that is what we call a “technicality,” Sorry you have to spend the next decade in the wilderness, Penn State. Bring a blanket and a Thermos.

I don’t know how the NCAA can justify this. I don’t understand why Penn State has to spend four years in the NCAA’s intensive-care-unit for the abhorrent actions of a few former employees, while North Carolina gets a pass for its rampant academic fraud.

Whether it’s the NCAA picking winners and losers (and in effect, endorsing institutional-level complicity), the Olympics being more about the IOC-approved sponsorship money than sport, and performance-enhanced cheating across many sports, it seems to come down to money.

Or perhaps it really comes down to human nature.