What is the most common statement made about USC and their NCAA penalties? Any casual college football fan will tell you that USC got slammed for paying their players. “USC paid Reggie Bush more than the Saints did his rookie year” etc. etc. This is a supposed to be funny, but I’ll tell you why I still find it intellectually insulting:
1) Reggie and his family didn’t actually receive that much money – probably something in the neighborhood of $50-$60k
2) Reggie was paid by sports marketers from San Diego with no affiliation to the university
3) USC received no benefit from the money Reggie took. The cash didn’t start coming until after his second season with the university, and Reggie left as soon as he could for the NFL (after his third season). So he didn’t attend USC because of the money, and he didn’t stay because of the money. If anything, it convinced him to leave as soon as possible.
4) The NCAA’s report on USC does not mention anyone from the university providing any special treatment to Reggie or his family. Rather, USC got punished for what the university should have known about one of its student-athletes while he was on the roster.

Let me repeat that for you – USC’s football team is on sanctions for what the NCAA says the school should have known about one of its 2,200 student-athletes’ interactions with individuals with no affiliations with the university (i.e. these guys are not even boosters).

Just to be clear, this is a new standard of oversight imposed by the NCAA with no previous precedent.

The NCAA says yes. The Infractions Committee that heard USC’s case, chaired by Paul Dee (remember that name), said in their report that “high profile players demand high profile compliance.”

Again, and I hope you’re picking up the theme here, this is a standard of oversight and monitoring that had never before been communicated by the NCAA. Literally, never. It’s not in a single NCAA bylaw.

Why? Because it doesn’t’ make sense. Who determines what is ‘high-profile’? Is the best player at Louisiana Tech ‘high profile’? What about Colorado State? Cal? Does an All-American water polo player fit that description, or just football and basketball players? Does it mean All-Conference? All-American? Should it be based on Lee Kiper’s mock drafts?

It’s an arbitrary qualitative assessment, and it’s impossible to enforce. High profile = USC was the best team in the land for a decade...and the SEC and NCAA run by Mike Silve were mad. USC was winning national titles and embarrassing Auburn and Arkansas.

NY Times

This post was edited on 9/10/15 at 2:27 am