I don’t think even the venerable NCAA can deprive someone of property or other rights based on the misconduct of friends.

They can and do. First, nobody has a “right” to NCAA eligibility, it’s a privilege granted at the NCAA’s sole discretion. Second, this isn’t criminal law, it’s contract law. The players agreed to these rules at the outset and now they have to follow them. The NCAA could’ve made a rule saying that if Phoenix sets a record high temperature in March, everyone loses their NCAA Eligibility — just because the players have no control over the weather doesn’t mean the NCAA can’t put that clause in a contract, and the players have FAR more control over their friends and family than they do the weather.

The problem is that if the rule isn’t this broad the players just do their dealing through third parties (friends or family). It’s not as though the NCAA just jumped straight to this, it’s a game of cat and mouse, and rules were written like this to counter-act the ways that athletes were getting around the rules.

Now, would the NCAA actually impose sanctions if there was a lot of compelling evidence that the friend/family member acted alone, without the knowledge or consent of the athlete? There’s no telling . . . but they’re certainly within their rights to do so.

It has been pretty obvious to me that the NCAA went on a witch hunt about 10 years ago targeting the SEC. Bama, UK, and MSU all were hit with pretty tough penalties all about the same time. Now were all three schools guilty? Heck yeah and they should have been punished. But the fact that the NCAA turns a blind eye to other “big time” programs such as USC or FSU ,who are clearly playing outside the guidelines, shows me they don’t really care about the rules…just who is breaking them..You’re telling me PSU, OSU, ND, FSU, UF, Texas etc have all been squeaky clean? Im not sure who is on this NCAA committee but they should have new elections..

you are exactly right. For whatever reason, and it could actually go all the way back to Bear and how he was never caught in violation at Bama (but he had been caught at A&M and they felt sure he was still buying players at Bama). And it could be related to how Bear sued the now defunct Saturday Evening Post for a story on fixing football at Bama, and how the story was proven wrong and he won the suit. Then seeing how powerful the Bear really was the NCAA was perhaps afraid of him, and when he left they were ready to get Bama. And even though you couldn’t find a nicer guy than Stallings he was a friend of Bear and Dubose played for Bear and even Saban reminds people of Bear and PBJ sure likes him a lot etc.

It could go that far back, but whenever it started right now the NCAA is really the National Committee Against Alabama. And so Saban being smart knows that Alabama must play super squeaky clean and even a hint of improper anything will be met by swift and decisive action as in last years text book thing which some schools would never have even reported at all. So that is the way it is at Alabama. We will take action others would never take and even if it cost us a game, and the text book thing sure hurt us down the strech with ULM and MSU.

The truth is if Andre is at USC right now he his getting ready to play in the Rose Bowl. But here he is gone…no discussion. That is where we are for now and will be for some time to come.