The lid is coming off the BCS...

A number of weeks ago, I decided to finally do a case study of the BCS Era in college football to see how much of a bloody farce the whole thing was.

What I found only surprised me in how far this whole farce has gone, and you'll (time permitting for editing purposes to clean it up and make it consistent) get the post on that before the college football season begins.

But the Aaron Hernandez situation has shone yet another light on one of the increasingly-apparent as corrupt championships of the BCS Era:  Urban Meyer's 2008 Florida team, which won the National Championship over Oklahoma.

A New York Times investigation, published today, indicates that there is no way the NCAA should not have stepped in to sanction this Florida team for the type of people it was bringing onto its campus.

Of the 121 players listed on the full roster, taking into account both arrests at the University of Florida and since, fully one-third, 41, have been arrested, according to the Times.  16 of those 41 were first- or second-string.  Another one was no less than Cam Newton for his laptop theft which led to his fraudulent National Championship at Auburn!

It got so bad that, the next year, one of the local Florida newspapers actually decided to chronicle the arrest patterns themselves.

These included, in the Times report:

• A safety who was arrested in 2008 for credit card fraud of at least 70 charges on a credit card of a dead woman.  This, one year after he was arrested for criminal property damage.
• A lineman who, in 2007, punched, spat, and then pulled an AK-47 on a man and tried to kill him!  (And probably half of the surrounding neighborhood, by my guess...)
• Two more safeties were arrested for incidents surrounding booted or impounded cars.
• A defensive end was arrested for accosting a worker at a sandwich shop.
• Another defensive end who got a DUI before the SEC Championship Game that year.
• A starting cornerback resisting arrest
• A backup running back threatening to kill his girlfriend (and continues to run afoul to this day)

And it's all discarded as normal college behavior.

If this is the case, it's time to shut down the higher education system of the United States of America.  That's how farcical this stand is.

Have we all forgotten that this is Florida here?  These "men" have probably been under the tutelage (and payment!) of thug, gang, criminal, and drug influences since their days in youth football!  Have we forgotten the ESPN Outside the Lines investigation showing that many of their parents could not pay rent without basically having their kids playing (effectively) professionally for the thug, gang, and drug lords of the area (many of whom, inexplicably, were allowed to coach them!) in the organized youth football leagues?

Have we forgotten about the number of schools having to be disciplined for collegiate-style illegal recruiting practices?

I think it's time we take a good hard look at the people who are allowed to play football (and sports in general!), and start wondering if how we are treating them means there is no longer a sense of right and wrong in this nation.