A costly, sluggish bureaucracy

Now that the NCAA has handed down its long-awaited sanctions against the UNC football team, we hope the University will be able to put the 2010 scandal behind us, once and for all.

But first, we should consider some basic lessons the situation can teach us, and the NCAA should do likewise.

For future coaches and athletes at UNC, the message is simple: ignorance is no excuse for poor oversight, and academic dishonesty simply will not fly at this university.

For the NCAA, the lessons are equally clear, but their implementation may be less straightforward.

The most important point the NCAA should take away from this ordeal is that their methods are far from perfect. The organization’s inefficiencies lead to disproportionate punishment for the inheritors, not the perpetrators, of the transgressions in question.

The NCAA’s final verdict comes nearly nine months after the organization formally notified UNC of allegations and almost two years after the scandal initially surfaced.

Over the course of this period, former head football coach Butch Davis was fired, Larry Fedora was hired to replace him and Everett Withers filled the position in the interim.

The position of athletic director also saw a changing of the guard, with Dick Baddour retiring early to allow his successor, Bubba Cunningham, to choose the new head coach. These administrative changes were necessary, and we hope to see the program thrive under its new leaders.

The membership of the football team has also undergone a similar overhaul, due in part to the dismissal of a number of players from the team and in part to students graduating. The majority of the student-athletes now on the football team weren’t even around for the controversy and certainly did not cause it.

Now it is up to a new crop of players and a new coach to atone for the errors of their predecessors. Instead of having a fresh start, these athletes and coaches will spend the next few years paying off debts they did not incur.

But though they may not be fair, these punishments are necessary. They are part of a larger system of deterrence from which everyone in college athletics stands to gain in the long run.

It’s just incredibly sad that it has to be our football team, which only a few years ago held such promise, that will now serve as a cautionary tale for those tempted to cheat.

Still, there are ways the NCAA could make the process fairer. A good place to start would be improving its speed.

If less time had elapsed between the actual scandal and the NCAA’s sanctioning, UNC would be that much closer to the end of the three-year probation period imposed on us.

We’d be that much closer to restoring the 15 scholarships that were taken away this week, and we’d be that much further away from the scandal itself and from its detrimental consequences.

If nothing else, we’d be that much closer to never having to talk about, read about or write about the football scandal again.

The NCAA would benefit from a speedier process, too, given its reputation for opacity, cronyism and draconian enforcement of an outdated code. If the NCAA’s actual goal is to reduce corruption in athletics, it needs to lead by example.

No one is disputing the importance of being thorough and deliberate in the kinds of investigations the NCAA undertakes.

But there is a big difference between diligence and inefficiency, and we aren’t convinced the NCAA understands this distinction. Quality doesn’t have to come at the expense of speed.

In the case of the NCAA, the two in fact go hand in hand: less time between steps in the adjudication process means fewer opportunities for under-the-table deals, favors and other corruptions. A swift response makes a stronger statement against rule-breaking than a sluggish one.

At the very least, it means less time for the public and the media to speculate about the possibility of corruption. Here again, both the NCAA and the universities under its purview would gain from a speedier process.