Stoopid

The collective brain trust known as the NCAA today leveled their latest round of penalties involving another Big 12 football team.

The Oklahoma Sooners will be placed on two years additional probation, be docked two scholarships over the next two years, and their eight wins from the 2005 season will be erased from their records.

This is a result of two players, including star QB Rhett Bomar, receiving extraordinary payment for work they did not perform at a local booster-owned car dealership. Word is the players received upwards of $17,000; one player was paid for time in which he was participating in an Oklahoma scrimmage.

Basically, the players were being paid to play football by a booster. Think Shaq in Blue Chips.

Flash back to last month. The Colorado Buffaloes were also put on two years probation, docked one scholarship over the next two years, and forced to pay $100,000 in fines to a charity determined by the Myles Brand and his band of merry idiots.

If you placed the two in a the Pepsi Challenge, you'd surmise that CU also committed some blatant disregard for NCAA laws. Maybe a booster was plying recruits with lavish meals, maybe fellow students were writing papers for players, maybe a handful of players were way outside the grade requirements. Wrong! CU's transgression: undercharging walk-ons about 60 cents per meal. Walk ons. I mean, what are we talking about here? Walk ons? A kid busting his rear to just simply don the Black and Gold and get his body pummeled on scout teams was getting an extra Capri Sun at lunch. CU claims it was simply a contractural error, the AD realized it and reported it to the Politburo the NCAA.

Paying scholarship players nice sums for unperformed work. A kid coming up two bits short on a cheeseburger. A similar penalty. Probably only Scooter Libby thinks that is fair.

Something else? The "rule" that CU "broke" won't even be a "rule" come August! I'm not an expert on the NCAA bylaws, but I'm pretty sure that paying players to watch The People's Court in the backroom of Big Oil's Dealership will still be a violation.

Oklahoma has appealed the sentence, while CU has humbly accepted the penalties and will take their licks. They'll have to scrap for $100K; in Oklahoma $100K can be collected from Charles Thompson's old coke routes. Alright, maybe those have dried up, but Oklahoma isn't struggling for cash.

Somewhere along the line, CU has raised the NCAA's ire (hmmm, Sonny Grandelius, Bill McCartney, Rick Neuheisel, Jeremy Bloom, Gary Barnett) as I won't be surprised if they got an additional penalty for letting the players drink water during practice. On the other hand, Oklahoma is a big TV name, has a bevy of national championships, and a big time visor wearing coach who now has eight less wins on his record. And they have a crazy deal for all Sooner boosters at the local dealership.

CU has a few dollars off their Twinkies. Sounds perfectly fair.