Since when did breaking the law become less of an issue than breaking NCAA rules?
For those that haven’t heard the news, Texas head baseball coach Augie Garrido was pulled over in the wee hours of the morning on Jan. 17 for driving without his headlights.
Police ran a DUI test and arrested him on a charge of drunken driving.
He then pleaded guilty, and the Longhorns subsequently suspended him for the first four games of the 2009 season.
Four games for a DUI?
That’s a great punishment, considering the first four games will be against Illinois-Chicago, a team Texas could likely beat without its starters.
In total, Garrido is effectively suspended for three days, including the Feb. 20 opener, a double-header the next day and the series finale on Sunday, Feb. 22.
Harsh punishment.
Compare that to former OU men’s basketball coach Kelvin Sampson and his violations of NCAA rules and his punishment.
Sampson was reprimanded for making more than 550 illegal phone calls to 17 different recruits while at OU, and was denied off-campus recruiting rights and couldn’t make phone calls for a year.
The Sooners were left under watch for three years for those recruiting violations, and Sampson left to coach at Indiana.
There, he was involved in controversial recruiting process in competition against Illinois for now-NBA guard Eric Gordon.
Gordon committed to Illinois but backed out and went to Indiana and Sampson was highly criticized for not communicating with Illinois coach Bruce Weber throughout the process.
But it got worse.
While at Indiana, Sampson broke five major NCAA rules, including the terms of the sanctions against him for his actions at OU.
He made 35 impermissible phone calls from his home, and the NCAA cracked down on him even further.
He resigned from his position as head coach of the Hoosiers, and the NCAA threw a five year show-cause order on him.
That means he can’t coach another NCAA team for five years unless the program hiring him shows he served his punishment.
Now, I’m not justifying what Sampson did; it was wrong.
Both figures were wrong with their actions.
But what’s worse, driving a car drunk without the headlights on and possibly hitting and killing someone or making a few extra phone calls to get a recruiting edge?
Clearly, drunken driving is a more serious offense.
The drunk driver is slapped on the wrist with a petty four-game suspension while the other is cut from the NCAA for five years.
That’s ridiculous.
Maybe that’s why society is so backwards, because the value of a game is greater than the value of someone’s life.
-Joey Helmer is a journalism senior.
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TexJake 3 years, 3 months ago
Your suggestion is illogical. Garrido's DWI is a violation of criminal law and he was appropriately punished both under Texas criminal law and then by the school. Garrido committed no violation of recruiting rules so his punishment did not implicate the NCAA. Sampson's actions were an egregious violation of recruiting rules so he incurred an appropriately severe NCAA punishment. You're attempting to juxtapose punishment by the NCAA and punishment by the employing educational institution. You could make an argument that Garrido should have received a harsher institutional punishment by UT, i.e., he should have been fired, but that is a question distinct from what was an appropriate punishment by the NCAA, because his DWI had nothing to do with NCAA rules. It's ridiculous to suggest the NCAA should impose punishment for criminal violations. Their job is to punish for NCAA rule violations, it's a school's job to determine an appropriate punishment for illegal behavior by a coach or student.
kansassooner 3 years, 3 months ago
I bet you love when people leave comments justifying your position, especially when they don't mean to. Great article, Joe.
JR