Fox Sports: Suspended Buckeyes should miss bowl

By: Thayer Evans (FoxSports.com) — When dealing out punishment to athletes, don’t apply it to the current season. Apply it only to future seasons — if the players are even still around then.

That’s apparently the NCAA’s new hypocritical guidelines for punishment and reinstatement of players found in violation of its rules.

At least that’s what you can glean from Thursday’s announcement that five Ohio State players will be suspended for the first five games of next season for each accepting $1,000 to $2,500 in cash in exchange for Buckeyes memorabilia. But they’ll be allowed to play in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 4 against Arkansas.

Regardless of who you cheer for, you ought to be outraged. The NCAA’s sudden, live-in-the-now-and-be-punished-later philosophy doesn’t make sense, and follows the arrival of president Mark Emmert on Nov. 1.

Before the former University of Washington president took over, the NCAA had issued immediate penalties this season for players who broke rules. Georgia wide receiver A.J. Green missed the Bulldogs’ first four games after it was discovered that he sold his bowl jersey to an agent for $1,000.

North Carolina wide receiver Greg Little and defensive end Robert Quinn were declared permanently ineligible in October after being found to have accepted jewelry and travel accommodations in the amounts of $5,642 and $4,952 respectively.

The NCAA’s punishment of Green, Little and Quinn showed that players who violated rules would pay the price as soon as possible, not later. It struck fear in coaches, players and recruits.

But because the NCAA has recently abandoned that precedent in college football, they’re not nearly as concerned as they were three months ago.

And they shouldn’t be because so far under Emmert’s leadership of the NCAA, you can take the risk now and not have to worry about paying for it until later – if at all. That’s been proven by the pay-for-play saga of Auburn quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Cameron Newton.

He was declared ineligible last month for a violation of amateurism rules and a day later reinstated by the NCAA after the organization ruled he and Auburn did not know that his father shopped him to Mississippi State for $180,000. Of course, the NCAA’s enforcement investigation into the matter remains ongoing, but Newton and Auburn couldn’t care less as long as it doesn’t prevent them from playing Oregon on Jan. 10 in the BCS title game.

And while Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith didn’t say it during Thursday’s press conference about the Buckeyes who will be suspended next season, he was clear about the financial importance of them playing in the Sugar Bowl.

“We have a lot of fans going down there,” Smith said. “A lot of fans. You have a lot of people who are committed to this bowl game. I felt that the sanctions that will be served in 2011 will be enough.”

That’s not the way the NCAA used to operate, though, which Ohio State coach Jim Tressel knows firsthand. It suspended former Buckeyes quarterback Troy Smith for the 2004 Alamo Bowl and 2005 season opener for accepting $500 from a booster.

The most heinous part of Thursday’s announcement is that some of the Ohio State players punished, such as quarterback Terrelle Pryor, may never serve their suspensions because…..

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