A mere three weeks after denying the appeal of Iowa defensive tackle Noah Shannon for a year-long gambling suspension — effectively ending the sixth-year defensive tackle's collegiate career — the NCAA announced Wednesday that it was considering a amendment to its gambling policies that could, essentially, restore Shannon's eligibility...
...just not right now.
In fact, not for another month, not until there's just four games left in the regular season. And the NCAA thinks Iowa and Shannon should be grateful for it.
As first reported by The Athletic's Nicole Auerbach Wednesday afternoon:
The pertinent part of Wednesday's announcement reads as follows (emphasis ours):
At the request of the Collegiate Commissioners Association, the Division I Council directed the Division I Committee on Student-Athlete Reinstatement and Legislative Committee to reexamine the legislation and application of reinstatement guidelines for student-athletes who engage in sports wagering.
[...]
Specifically, the committees will review penalties for student-athletes who participate in sports wagering, but not on their own teams. The council reaffirmed that significant penalties continue to be appropriate for wagering behaviors that potentially compromise the integrity of contests, including wagering on a student-athlete's own team. The Committee on Student-Athlete Reinstatement is expected to complete its review and finalize recommendations by mid-October, with a final Council Coordination Committee vote on updated guidelines to occur at the end of October. The guidelines potentially could be applied retroactively.
Draft concepts under consideration include:
- On a first offense, eliminate penalties that result in student-athletes being withheld from competition — regardless of the dollar value of the wagers and including bets placed on other sports at a student-athlete's school — and require education on sports wagering rules and prevention.- On a second offense, potentially involve withholding penalties, depending on the dollar value of the bet(s) in question.- On a third or subsequent offense, resulting penalty could be a loss of one full season of eligibility.
Iowa and Iowa State are the only two D-I schools whose athletes are affected by a state gambling investigation — an investigation that, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out ($), has absolutely, positively flunked the smell test from the jump. Also, this draft legislation is from, and for, D-I only. So it's not hard to read between the lines that this is the NCAA's "attempt" to rectify the Shannon situation... in its familiarly feckless, bumbling way.
You want your eligibility back? The powers that be agree! Now just wait another month here in the middle of the season for the committees to deliberate first.
That's a disservice to Shannon, to the other affected athletes, and to common sense and decency. And Iowa should send a message back to the NCAA that Shannon has done enough waiting by putting him on the field as soon as possible, committees be damned.
Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz lit into the NCAA's announcement on the Hawk Talk radio show on Wednesday night (a little after the 51-minute mark), after being asked by host Gary Dolphin.
"My first response was happiness," Ferentz said. "I just hope it does go through, and I hope Noah gets to get on the field this year."
"The other side of me said, 'could this have taken place somewhere in May, June, July?'" Ferentz asked rhetorically. "Any time before this season actually started and somebody's life was impacted? You get a little upset about it."
“You'd think since we had this breakthrough revelation, maybe we could act on it in the next couple of days? Have an emergency meeting?" Ferentz said. "You'd think it might be something they could address in the very near future."
Ferentz is absolutely right. and the NCAA claiming in its press release — in a quote attributed to president Charlie Baker, no less! — that it "continue[s] to put student-athlete well-being front and center in the Association's efforts around sports wagering" is an outrageously tone-deaf act of self-congratulation from the same institution who handed down Shannon's punishment then denied his appeal in the first place, all without the courtesy of an explanation in writing.
The Iowa Hawkeye athletic department has long held the mantra of "Win, Graduate, Do It Right," with "do it right" essentially meaning NCAA compliance. And though the slogan has caught its fair share of cynical eye-rolls over the years, it has also held up nicely; Iowa has excelled, in football and beyond, in all three areas.
But what good is "doing it right" when the NCAA is doing your sixth-year senior captain wrong? What's the point in waiting four more weeks (and three more games) to be told that he shouldn't have lost any weeks at all? What's the point of NCAA compliance when the NCAA can't fix its own mistakes fast enough?
"[The suspension] is just a waste of emotion and investment, it's all unfair," Ferentz said. "I think that's the problem with bureaucracies. The good news is at least we're getting a response here, like somebody's alive over there and paying attention? But it would have been great if it was sooner."
Maybe Shannon wouldn't have been able to get back on the field in a meaningful way before November anyway. He would have missed a decent portion of the season to an arm injury to begin with, and he was recently reclassified as a student assistant after being informed with the denied appeal that the door was not only locked, but the NCAA had also eaten the key.
But the luxury of patience with Shannon's status expired "somewhere in May, June, July." So get him in pads as soon as possible. Back in the rotation as soon as possible. Back on the field as soon as he can help the team, no matter what the calendar says. Make the NCAA do something about it — see how serious that talk about "putting student-athlete well-being front and center" really is.
Assuredly, Shannon getting back on the field and taking his first snap will be the loudest ovation of the season at Kinnick Stadium, and if it comes via an act of defiance by the dean of FBS college football, that won't erode a molecule of fan support. If anything, it'll embolden it.
Let's consider the worst-case scenario: that the NCAA punishes Iowa for calling its bluff. Even if the NCAA has a quicker response to Shannon being sent out prior to reinstatement than it does to fixing its own mistake, and even if it thinks a drastic measure like issuing a violation vacating wins is the proper way to address it — Iowa's response should be simple: so what?
Ferentz has over 200 wins on his record already, wins that came "the right way." The NCAA can take scores off the books all it wants, but every player on the team will know that those games did happen, and that every guy that deserved to be out there was out there. That hypothetical NCAA violation, which would be the first on Ferentz's record (and probably the only one by the time he hangs the whistle up), would be a badge of honor, not a stain.
After all, with the clock on his career ticking irrevocably down, what does Shannon deserve from this program the most — to "do it right," or to make it right?
