NCAA President Mark Emmert this morning appeared on ESPN Radio’s “Mike & Mike in the Morning” and discussed the investigation into the Univ. of Miami, athletics booster Nevin Shapiro and how NCAA improperly conducted the case. ESPN's Mike Greenberg said, “When you consider how the NCAA doles out discipline against coaches routinely in college sports, quite frankly the way that I felt that you were not disciplined in that circumstance when the things directly under your purview took place, I found that confusing to say the least.” Emmert said, “The point you're raising is a really critical one. ... The association -- all the 100 members -- expect all their members to behave in a way that's consistent with all our values and then my job is to make sure the national office does the same thing. So when we discovered we had behaviors going on that were inconsistent with our policies and our values, I'm very confident that we did exactly the right thing.” Calls have been made for Emmert to step down amid the controversy, but he said this situation “is exactly like saying if an assistant coach did something wrong, the president of the university ought to be fired." Emmert: "I'm not going to talk about personnel decisions, but the people who were directly involved were held accountable. Their immediate supervisors were held accountable. The person above that was held accountable. The person above that was held accountable. We went very deep in the chain of command here and trust me, it wasn't exactly a great week for me either. But the fact of the matter is that the people that needed to be held accountable for this were held accountable for it.”
A COUPLE BAD APPLES DON'T SPOIL THE BUNCH: Emmert noted there are around 460 people in the NCAA, and everyone is "running activities all around the country 24/7." He said, "We have very good people that are involved in these activities. The decision of a couple of guys in a single case where the leadership of the organization from the board on down is intentionally hands-off on those investigations -- you don't want the president of the NCAA in the middle of these investigations mucking around with them. The notion that the president is going to be ... involved in the day-to-day conduct of an investigation is not only wrong, it's wrong-headed” ("Mike & Mike in the Morning," ESPN Radio, 3/25).
