Odds and Sods

Thirty-Six Florida State football players, according to the Associated Press, will not travel with the team to face Kentucky in the Music City Bowl Dec. 31.

Twenty-three of the players are embroiled in an academic cheating scandal involving an online music history exam.  The others are reportedly due to either injuries or unrelated team rules violations.

College programs cannot babysit their players, nor should they be expected to do so.  Nearly every football program has an isolated incident over the course of the season.  Twenty-three players embroiled in a cheating scandal, however, epitomizes symptomatic neglect on the part of the Florida State program.

It certainly proves a damning indictment for Bobby Bowden’s tenure, such as it is.  There are downsides to entrusting a football program/multi-million dollar industry to a doddering old fart who is well past his sell-by date.  They are lucky if Bowden can remember the players’ names let alone has any knowledge of what his players are doing off the field.  It is clear that the standards for excellence on the field are not the only ones that have fallen as Bowden has approached senility.

However, the real question should be why Florida State is even playing in a bowl game after this scandal?

Joe Paterno forced his entire team to pick up trash after games because six players were arrested in connection with an off-campus fight.  The punishment proved harsh and more than a bit old-school, but he got his point across.

What would Paterno have done after a scandal like Florida State’s?

This was an academic scandal.  It is one thing for players to be involved in an off-campus altecation.  Systemized cheating is a slight to the university as a whole.

A bowl game is supposed to be a reward for a team after a successful season.  They get to travel to a (sometimes) exotic location.  They get to stay at a resort.  They get a gift bag with free stuff.  They get to play on National Television.  How exactly does a team with 1/3 of its players suspended deserve such an honor?

Suspending the players is the bare minimum response that Florida State could have made, and one that would have been enforced by the NCAA at that.

The Florida State Football Program participating in bowl game festivities after such a scandal is a farce.  They will most likely be embarrassed on the field by Kentucky and off the field as the scandal is exacerbated and the name of the school and program is dragged further through the mud.The only benefit will be to Florida state appearing in the bowl, will be the relatively diminutive check written out to the university.

University presidents claim to have the interests of the “student-athletes” at heart, but as this incident shows once again, their true motivations appear to lie elsewhere.