It seems that it is not only the large schools that have their own PR Nightmares to deal with. I came across this article from ESPN that listed all of the different probations and penalties that Ball State will be facing due to the fact that they have been breaking some rules in their athletic department.
According to this article, it seems that some students have been getting books for classes that they are not enrolled in, and sometimes even get more than one copy. Some of the other teams at Ball State, such as their softball team, has been practicing more per week than they should be during the off season. The NCAA sets a certain number of hours per week that a team can practice together (for track it was 8 hrs during the off season, and 20 during the season)– which I believe very few schools actually follow. But what is amazing is the fact that this crisis involved 89 athletes from 10 different sports— yikes!
The list goes on to the different rules and regulations that Ball State has broken, which doesn’t surprise me at all. What is frustrating at times is that some of the smaller schools say that the only problems that happen in sports come from the larger and more well-known universities. But it is the smaller schools that you do have to watch because they are not in the spotlight, so they may feel that they can get away with more.
Plus, this situation tells you a lot about a university when so many teams are breaking the rules and giving athletes special benefits. How is Ball State going to address this to their boosters and the rest of the community? They can’t exactly say– oops, my bad! I think that they will have to learn the hard way by having some of their scholarships taken away and being on probation. It does question the reputation of not only the university and the athletic department, but also the people that are there.
These are just a few of my thoughts on the subject. I hope you all are having a great day!
Best Wishes,
Karen 🙂
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