The Oklahoma State Case: What Just Happened?

If you haven’t seen it, the NCAA denied Oklahoma State’s appeal after an assistant got caught up in the FBI/Adidas scandal and as a result, OSU is banned from this year’s NCAA tournament.

There were some great tweets from OSU’s players about this including one guy who sent out a picture from his sophomore year in high school (where he looked about 12) explaining what he was doing when the original offense happened.

It was pretty brilliant really.

Jay Bilas sent out a sarcastic tweet reminding us that obviously it’s all about the players and what’s best for them.

Is it heavy-handed? Well, of course. It’s the NCAA. But the better question is: why is it so heavy handed?

It’s hard to know for sure but we feel like this is a reasonable hypothesis: the NCAA has suffered massive losses recently and saw the very definition of amateurism redefined by the Supreme Court this summer. What we are seeing now is the cartel reacting defensively, if not defiantly, to reclaim lost power if possible and if not, to at least preserve what is left.

It’s not a surprising reaction really. In fact it was entirely predictable and now, one of two things is probably going to happen.

Oklahoma State is going to sue, arguing that similar cases got very different results (and possibly/likely win) or the NCAA will manage to claw back some power it just lost.

But that seems unlikely at this late date. The NC2A, as Jerry Tarkanian used to call it, is clearly looking to maintain relevance, but it’s unlikely to find it through fear. You may have noticed that, aside from threatening to sue, OSU coach Mike Boynton advised his colleagues that, if his experience is anything to go on, there’s no point in cooperating with the NCAA.