Joe Medley: SEC commish has put lockdown on cheating, but those lockups, well, that's another story
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| SEC commissioner Mike Slive speaks to the media at the SEC football media days in Hoover on Wednesday. Slive spoke after his address about how the SEC has made a 'cultural shift' in its off-field controversy and on-field competiveness. Photo: Butch Dill/Associated Press |
HOOVER — First, please suspend disbelief and laughter for a few lines.
Might want to suspend intellect, too, but here it comes: cheating is all but dead in the Southeastern Conference.
Yes, they're tryin', but they're not cheatin'.
OK, let's dial it back. Even as SEC commissioner Mike Slive opened his football media days address here Wednesday by touting near success in his 6-year-old pledge to eradicate probation from the league, near success does not a total success make.
Arkansas' track program is on probation, after all, and even Slive wouldn't go so far as to declare cheating dead in the SEC.
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"I can tell you that, when issues arise, we get notified, and our schools have handled these matters in a very, very, very honest way and a very effective way," Slive said after his address. " … The most satisfying accomplishment for me is the combination of the fact that we are, essentially, probation free, we're probably as competitively good as we've ever been and that we put to rest the old chestnut, so to speak, that if you didn't do it a certain way, you couldn't win.
"That signifies a cultural shift. Those days are gone."
While Slive didn't knock on anything (maybe he should have), he deserves credit for setting the goal that launched a task force. That task force developed guidelines that, among other things, told SEC schools how to report each other to the SEC office.
All of that led to a bottom-line better situation than Slive found when he took the job in July of 2002. Much better.
Now, if only the SEC could keep its players out of police blotters.
While Slive comes off as a thoughtful, refreshingly diplomatic and purpose-driven commish, he lives in a controversy-driven media world. Athlete arrests make headlines, and the months since last season saw bold ink gush.
Former Alabama linebacker Jimmy Johns, dismissed from the team, faces felony drug charges. There were arrests and/or discipline issues at Arkansas, Georgia, LSU, South Carolina, Tennessee and even Vanderbilt.
Vandy running back Jermaine Doster's three misdemeanor charges kicked in the ivory tower's proverbial windows. Academic-minded schools might eliminate athletics departments in a spasm of idealism, but they can't eliminate the risk of a night on the town gone bad.
Slive — he who spearheaded efforts to change the SEC's cheatin' culture — has moved on to the league's new public relations problem … or the latest incarnation of an old PR problem. He plans to expand the league's Mentors in Violence Program.
"That was strictly focused on gender relationships, and we are going to propose to our athletics directors that the program be modified to deal with other behavioral issues that we have seen," he said. "That's not to say the institutions aren't first in the line of fire, but my view is that we have three obligations to our kids. One is academic, one is athletic and one is emotional.
"I think we may be the only conference, or certainly the first conference, that is trying to become proactive in dealing with behavioral issues."
Slive said he hopes to raise the proposal at an athletics directors meeting in August. He doesn't see proposing league-wide suspension guidelines or the like; he prefers to leave that to the 12 member schools.
"We're going to have a forum with our ADs at our meeting to let them exchange information, talk about those practices, how do they deal with issues," Slive said. "But we're not the NFL, and we're not a monolithic organization to that extent where the NFL can decide that somebody's going to play or not play. That's not what we do."
Slive can get the ball rolling toward an improvement on the behavior front. He managed a stunning success on the probation front, even if proves to be temporary.
As for the cheatin', well, he's tryin'.
