“If I've learned anything in the six months [as NCAA president], the single biggest concern that I have among the threats to the collegiate model is simply the threat of integrity,” Emmert said. “I've heard concerns expressed by people all around the country about the integrity of intercollegiate athletics right now, that people are seeing things that they don't like and that I don't like and that many people are concerned about.
“As they see those things, they extrapolate across a whole enterprise of intercollegiate athletics. On the face of that, that's inherently unfair because the vast majority of what goes on inside intercollegiate athletics is done by people who have extraordinary integrity, have extraordinary concern for their student-athletes, and people who want nothing more than to have intercollegiate athletics be successful in all the ways we all want it to be.
“But there are those occasions where we have people from top to bottom who don't spend enough time and care in the conduct of this business. And we see that while we have an understanding about a lot of our values, sometimes we're lagging in that integrity. We need to be sure that we restore it. We need to make sure that people understand what we stand for. We need to make sure that we're willing to stand up behind that. And when we have people that don't want to conduct themselves consistent with the integrity of these games, we need to be ready to deal with that appropriately.”
Dealing with that appropriately means dropping the hammer in terms of penalties for rule-breakers. As Emmert himself pointed out, punishments need to transmit a “constructive fear” to potential scofflaws.
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There has been significant cost to the NCAA on the integrity front. The good news is that the president isn’t dodging that fact. The better news is that his enforcement staff has been as active and aggressive as it’s ever been in combating it.
Maybe by the time Emmert takes to the Final Four dais next year, there will be a few more big-time cheaters’ skins nailed to the wall.
