By fitsnews – May 7, 2012
There is no love lost between this website and University of Georgia head football coach Mark Richt. We think he’s a hypocritical douche, and we think his program is all sorts of crooked.
Having said that, the NCAA probably went a little overboard in giving Richt a two week phone suspension (i.e. he can’t talk to would-be recruits for two weeks) as a result of premature comments made about recruit Josh Harvey-Clemons on National Signing Day. According to The Macon Telegraph, the NCAA doled out this punishment after Richt spoke about Harvey-Clemons on ESPNU prior to the school receiving his national letter of intent (LOI).
Harvey-Clemons had already committed to play football for Georgia, and the only reason his LOI was late involved a hold-up over his grandfather’s signature.
Rules are rules … so the NCAA was certainly within its right to impose a sanction on Richt. Still, when the long and voluminous history of Richt’s dubious dealings is finally written we don’t expect this chapter to register as much more than a blip.
He’s shady, to be sure … but this sort of selective enforcement actually reflects worse on the NCAA than it does on Richt (and coming from us, that’s saying something).
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