This is the first year of the Cost of Attendance payments for college football players. It’s not very surprising that word has come out about some football programs wanting to institute fines for the players. Bud Foster of Virginia Tech got in some hot water talking about fines and former Cincinnati AD Whit Babcock had to publicly say that Tech would not institute any kind of fines, period. That was yesterday. Today Cincinnati has entered the news:
Cincinnati’s Tommy Tuberville said he will consider withholding some cost of attendance money for off the field shortcomings/violations.
— Joe Schad (@schadjoe) August 27, 2015
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Cincy players who fail to meet academic requirements or violate team rules or athletic department policies could be subject.
— Joe Schad (@schadjoe) August 27, 2015
“We are holding them accountable,” Tommy Tuberville said.
— Joe Schad (@schadjoe) August 27, 2015
Cincinnati athletics director Mike Bohn: “It’s not a fine. It’s not a threat. It’s a tool.” Bohn says it’s an “accountability measure.”
— Joe Schad (@schadjoe) August 27, 2015
Cincinnati players are receiving $5,504 to $7,018 more a year, at or near tops in nation.
— Joe Schad (@schadjoe) August 27, 2015
If a Cincinnati player fails a drug test, or has a DUI or has academic fraud, for example, school has structure to reduce payment/s.
— Joe Schad (@schadjoe) August 27, 2015
Schad also goes on to mention that something like this had been a part of grant-in aids for a number of years. His article on ESPN says that UC has not fined anyone as of now.
It’s hard not to look at this on the surface and think “players should be fined if they get DUIs or get arrested,” but there is a lot more going on beneath the surface. Even if you think that the school has the right to do this, which they obviously do, is it right for the football program to be the one leveling fines and reducing payment to players? Should it be up to Tommy Tuberville and the athletic director? How much of their salary is cut if they get a DUI or get in some kind of hot water? Zero dollars and zero cents is the answer to that one.
I’m not against players being held accountable for their actions. Everyone should be. I am against the football program specifically fining players. The ways to be fined aren’t public since we don’t really know the team rules.
Following the black eye Cincinnati received last season with multiple players being arrested, this is pretty big swing back to keep them in line. Of course, that was an anomaly compared to the small history of Cincinnati football players in legal trouble. This seems like a wild overreaction to what was a very small issue. The two main players arrested last season are both back on the team this year. It ended up being water under the bridge.
The part where I find this very offputting is that the players aren’t making that much off their stipends. The total of $5-7,000 isn’t a lot. And that’s one of the highest totals. I certainly don’t think that’s an amount of money given to the players, who are getting a scholarship from the school, to have it withheld from the football program because they were late to a meeting or something similarly petty that constitutes breaking a team rule. It’s extremely petty. I understand that the team wants to keep players in line, but that’s not the team’s money to take. That’s money from the University of Cincinnati. That’s not out of Tommy Tuberville’s pocket. If the football program was paying out bonuses, that would be a different story. Since they aren’t, I find this a bit sickening.
It doesn’t even matter the amount of the fines. If the fines are small for some of the less important rules, it’s immediately petty. If the fines are large, it moves into the range of the preposterous because it becomes an issue of who are they to set such a high fine? Something that like that would immediately get challenged by the student, one would think.
As I said in the headline, something like this is a slippery slope. Once you start talking about taking money from student athletes for reasons that are football, it’s a move that is going to make the program and athletic department look like vultures. Even if no one gets fined this entire season, there is no success with the measures because one could easily argue they didn’t need to be instituted in the first place.
One school was going to come out with this first. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it was the Unviersity of Cincinnati, Mike Bohn and Tommy Tuberville.
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