Joseph D'Amico

Boise State versus the world by The Sports Network

Seriously, the governing body of college athletics has the time and resources to dig up dirt on the Broncos to try and bring down one of the feel-good programs in an otherwise tainted sports climate?

Here is a football team at the Football Bowl Subdivision level that can’t get any of the glory schools to even consider playing them during the regular season, because head coach Chris Petersen is running the group like a well- oiled machine.

Here is a squad that grew out of a junior college back in 1933, jumped to Division II status around the time the U.S. was making space flight a priority, advanced to the Division I-AA level about three decades ago and eventually kicked open the door of Division I-A and the FBS, and now all of the automatic qualifying schools are having a hard time dealing with BSU’s ascension.

Just ask the mighty Oklahoma Sooners who were literally caught flat-footed in overtime of the 2007 Fiesta Bowl when the Broncos scored one for the underdogs with a stunning 43-42 win. Even before then Boise State had to beg to be invited to the figurative adult table where the team had already proven it could behave. Still, no one of consequence would give them the time of day.

Since the year 2000, BSU football has been incredibly successful, a record of 124-18, with the team posting double-digit victory totals in eight of the last nine campaigns. If no one in the power conferences is willing to play with the Broncos and those same teams are getting tired of hearing about it, what’s the only way to silence the team?

Bring in the penalty police who took years to realize that Reggie Bush and the USC Trojans were operating as a minor-league feeder to the pros, and still haven’t figured out that 2010 Heisman Trophy winner Cam Newton was a hired mercenary who I am sure benefited from more than just a hamburger and some fries down south.

I understand that the NCAA can’t be showing favoritism by leaving the little guys alone, but is it really necessary to penalize an athletics program for handing an incoming student a sandwich and letting another kid crash on the couch? What is going on here? Sounds like a little bit of sour grapes from the good ol’ boys of college football. Heck, if you can’t beat the Broncos on the field you’d better find a way to kick them around a bit off it and make sure they’ve learned that valuable lesson of giving someone a ride from point A to point B. It doesn’t say that potential students were plied with loose women and bottles of booze in the back of a stretch Hummer on the way to Vegas for a tawdry weekend, more like a trip to the local gas station for a bag of chips and a sweet tea.

Granted, I don’t know all the minutiae that is what the NCAA calls impermissible housing, transportation or meals, but all of these recent findings really just sound like nonsense in the grand scheme of things. And when I say grand scheme, I am talking about you Fiesta Bowl CEO Jon Junker, who assumed it was just fine to go on a fact-finding expedition to a Phoenix strip club and consider it research to justify him charging more than $1,200 in the establishment on behalf of his committee.

In total, Boise State University was found to have offered up just under $5,000 over the course of five years in what the NCAA deems illegal benefits. The bulk of those improprieties came from the men’s and women’s tennis teams and the track and field program. The Broncos have now earned the title of a program that lacks “institutional control” partly because the track coaches conducted impermissible practice sessions for five incoming, international student-athletes prior to enrollment.

Impermissible practices? Did those involve races through campus to abscond with school-owned computers or electronics of their fellow students? Really, seeing how high someone can jump or how they handle a discus is now on par with a DUI rap, theft and cheating on exams?

Didn’t I just see Ohio State’s signal-caller Terrelle Pryor racing around Columbus in a high performance auto that someone in his position shouldn’t be allowed to own? Yet, there’s video of Pryor, who coincidentally is currently operating with a suspended license, speeding through stop signs and the local authorities want nothing to do with penalizing the golden child who has brought them back to prominence and series dominance versus rival Michigan.

Don’t even get me started on Saint Jim Tressel and his blatant disregard for rules and regulations. A school like OSU has endless resources in order to keep everyone in line and a compliance office who’s sole purpose it is to make sure that no one steps out of bounds, and still Columbus has become ground zero for folks with questionable character because Tressel thought he was above the law.

Honestly, it’s a disgusting display all around with the NCAA over-stepping its boundaries in one area (Boise State) and hiding under the covers and claiming ignorance almost everywhere else. With the manner in which the NCAA chooses to operate, it is beginning to look more and more like the anagram stands for ‘Never Caring About Athletes’ in order to preserve their bottom line.

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