The takeaway from the Mississippi State NCAA infractions case is not an original lesson, but clearly is one schools need to re-learn from time to time.

If you have a rules violation, face the problem early and do something about it.

Mississippi State's sanctions stemmed from recruit Will Redmond receiving benefits from a booster. (Rivals)The school was dealt only a light blow by the NCAA Committee on Infractions Friday for impermissible benefits received by a Bulldogs football player. The NCAA accepted the school's self-imposed sanctions, docking the football program two scholarships. Mississippi State also received a two-year probation and some other minor recruiting restrictions. Former assistant coach Angelo Mirando, who was cited for unethical conduct, was given a one-year show-cause penalty, which effectively will keep him out of major-college coaching until 2014 at the earliest.

Since Kentucky's forthright cooperation with the NCAA helped it narrowly avoid the death penalty in basketball in the late 1980s, the game plan has been laid out: Lie and deny at your own risk. Since then,

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Ready, set, cheat.

That's the tacit message the NCAA currently is sending to its membership. The time is now to break the rules.

Under NCAA president Mark Emmert, the association's enforcement division is low on staff and morale. (AP) If you're an agent or runner looking to pay your way into a player's inner circle, go for it. If you're a coach looking for a corner-cutting advantage in recruiting, take a shot. If you're a player or recruit seeking an impermissible benefit or an academic quick fix, no time like the present.

The NCAA enforcement division – the most scrutinized, controversial and perhaps vital part of the entire organization – is in crisis mode. It is short-handed. It is suffering from an alarming brain drain and morale deficit. It has been beaten into a corner by the backfired Miami football investigation and subsequent fallout.

On Wednesday, Yahoo! Sports exclusively published the first extensive public comments from former NCAA Vice President for Enforcement Julie Roe Lach, who was forced out of her position in February due to the missteps in Miami. Lach took the high road

Read More »from As NCAA faces enforcement crisis, now's the time for coaches, boosters to break rules

They're laughing at Notre Dame today. And at your neighborhood parish. And perhaps even at the Vatican.

The Southeastern Conference is chuckling.

E. Gordon Gee made nearly $2 million in annual compensation as Ohio State's president. (USA Today Sports)So are the universities of Louisville and Cincinnati.

Bret Bielema, too.

And if you go back a bit, Boise State and the Little Sisters of the Poor are probably smiling as well.

Gordon Gee has announced his retirement as president at Ohio State, effective July 1. It's abrupt enough to make clear that this was a forced exit plan, not a desired one.

Maybe he finally ran out of bad-joke material. Or maybe the school's trustees finally ran out of patience with Bow Tie's ability to insult and offend.

The old backtrack apology routine was wearing a little thin, wasn't it?

Gee has spent several days saying he was sorry for December 2012 comments to the Ohio State Athletics Council – comments that became public last week. According to the Columbus Dispatch, trustees were so concerned by Gee's indiscriminate insults that day, they met Jan. 31 and March

Read More »from The joke's finally on Ohio State as university president Gordon Gee retires

Spring is the silly season in college sports. With football and basketball finished, the media vacuum tends to be filled by misadventures, missteps and misguided rhetoric that becomes a bigger deal in a slower news cycle.

Spring 2013 has been sillier than normal. Starting the moment the 60-year-old coach of the national champion basketball team stepped into a tattoo parlor, it's been an extended romp through the absurd.

Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee is primed for the silly season. (Getty Images)To help you keep track of it all, I've devised a quiz.

1. Which group has Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee not recently offended?

A. Damn Catholics, especially those with ties to Notre Dame.
B. Illiterate Southerners, especially those with ties to the Southeastern Conference.
C. Academically deficient Kentuckians, especially those with ties to the universities of Kentucky and Louisville.
D. College administrators in the Big Ten, ACC and Big 12, especially those who strenuously tried to hide the inner workings of realignment.
E. Women and minorities.

Answer: E.

Read More »from College sports' silly season requires a pop quiz that is on par with it

DESTIN, Fla. – Mike Slive does nothing by accident.

Every move, every public word, is carefully calibrated to serve a purpose. The commissioner of the Southeastern Conference is first-team All-Deliberate. SEC Commissioner Mike Slive speaks to the media. (AP)

So when Slive sat down with the media Tuesday to recap the first day of SEC spring meetings, it meant something when he spent most of the session talking about men's basketball. Specifically, it meant this: we play hoops in this league, too, and we want you to acknowledge it.

Several football-centric media members were rolling their eyes and checking their watches through the basketball talk, which is part of the problem the SEC is combating: basketball apathy. For the league to be as good as it can be, it needs the schools and their fans to actually care about the product and demand better performance. 

While most of the league is obsessing over whether there will be eight or nine league games come 2016, Slive is doing what he can to make SEC basketball better right now.

He knows

Read More »from SEC confronting men's basketball scheduling issues head-on with league approval process

DESTIN, Fla. – The gradual process of firming up the College Football Playoff selection committee is continuing here, with Southeastern Conference athletic directors submitting names of potential members to commissioner Mike Slive this week.

SEC commissioner Mike Slive has asked for names of selection committee candidates by Friday. (AP)Slive has asked for names by Friday, when the SEC spring meetings conclude. College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock said other conference commissioners also are gathering names during their spring meetings.

"We'll have 100 or more names, I'm sure," Hancock said, adding that the committee should number anywhere from 12 to 20.

Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley said he submitted two names to Slive, but declined to identify who they are. Foley himself has no interest in serving on the committee.

One group that will not be represented on the selection committee: the commissioners themselves. Hancock said the College Football Playoff management committee – which comprises the 11 conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletic

Read More »from SEC athletic directors gathering candidates for College Football Playoff selection committee

DESTIN, Fla. – Southeastern Conference commissioner Mike Slive said Tuesday that the league’s athletic directors voted unanimously to explore a primary site for the men’s basketball tournament, as opposed to moving it around regularly to different locales. 

Southeastern Conference Commissioner Mike Slive, right, speaks at a press conference. (AP)Slive said the league’s success in making Atlanta the host of the football title game and Hoover, Ala., the host of the baseball tournament has spurred interest in anchoring the basketball tourney. However, he stopped short of saying the league would award the site permanently, instead using the word “primary.”

The presumptive leader to become the SEC’s primary site is Nashville, which hosted this year’s tournament and is scheduled to host in 2015, ’16 and ’19. The 2014 site has been awarded to Atlanta. The 2017 and ’18 tourney sites have not yet been determined.

Since 2000, the SEC tourney has been in Atlanta seven times, Nashville four times, New Orleans twice and Tampa once. But as crowds have dipped to sizes too small to require

Read More »from SEC targeting primary site for annual men's basketball tournament

Nick Saban speaks to the media after Alabama won the BCS title game against Notre Dame. (Getty)

DESTIN, Fla. – Nick Saban’s Southeastern Conference brethren should listen to him.

Not just because he owns them on the field in the fall. Because he’s the smartest coach in the conference room, too.

[Related: SEC exploring ways to keep attendance high, including improved Wi-Fi]

They should listen to the Alabama coach’s pitch for adding a ninth game to the league schedule. They should man up and embrace the challenge, instead of using the SEC’s legitimate power status as an excuse to schedule timidly. They should resist the lure of three or four hollow victories a year over the likes of Alabama State, Alcorn State and Southeast Missouri State and take on someone their own size.

This will be the hot topic this week at SEC spring meetings – over chilled jumbo shrimp, at the beach, on the golf course and at places where actual work may get done.

Saban made his case for nine games again Tuesday, saying “I’m absolutely in the minority, no question about it.” Most SEC coaches say it’s like

Read More »from Nick Saban's push for a nine-game SEC schedule makes sense to those who'll listen