Living with the Alabama Textbook scandal

Last week, the NCAA gave Alabama a slap on the wrist, giving them three years of probation due to athletes improperly using their textbook benefits. The national media gave the story a bit of play, but it was largely ignored. The talk radio hosts in Columbia, however, latched onto this story immediately. One station talked about the story for roughly five hours on the day the probation was handed down by the NCAA. You would have thought that Alabama had committed a major infraction, rather than just the selling of textbooks. The hosts repeatedly called for scholarship losses.

In my experience, scholarship losses generally occur when violations give a team a competitive advantage. When Bama was busted for its recruiting of Albert Means, the team was attempting to get a competitive advantage. Scholarship losses were the deserved punishment. This textbook scandal, however, was a case of athletes on campus taking advantage of the system. There was no advantage gained, and therefore no scholarships lost.

I guess this is what I get for living in a SEC region in which 7-6 is considered a highly successful season. Competitive advantage consists of keeping Stephen Garcia out of 5 Points for 48 hours in Columbia. 

This will be settled on the field on October 17 in Tuscaloosa. Alabama will have a full slate of scholarship players and so will the Gamecocks (provided they are not in prison. . .the track record under Holtz and Spurrier says that is a possibility). We'll learn pretty quickly which team has the true competitive advantage.