Tag: Will Wade

Sharife Cooper had to wait. And wait. And wait some more before he got to put on an Auburn jersey and play for the Tigers for the first time.

And why? Well, we may never know. The NCAA kept him out for something as simple as his dad is an agent and, hey, if a 5-star signs with Auburn, something must be up, right?

Cooper was punished before anything was even proven illegal, nary a violation reported nor any reputable reason given. The kid had to sit and watch his teammates play without him while his reputation took a hit.

Meanwhile, and for some unknown reason that will always remain a mystery, LSU’s Will Wade and Arizona’s Sean Miller are on the sidelines allowed to coach. You know those two, right? The coaches that were caught on tape talking about paying for recruits?

“I’ll be honest with you, I’m [expletive] tired of dealing with the thing. Like I’m just [expletive] sick of dealing with the [expletive]. Like, this should not be that [expletive] complicated.”

That is what Wade was overheard saying. He was temporarily suspended by LSU but the school brought him back with provisions to his contract.

Yet the NCAA has done nothing expect pass on the case to another organization. No suspensions nor punishment. The NCAA has sat on their hands and allowed a man to run a program while all evidence points toward guilt. If Cooper was alleged to have done just one iota of what Wade is, he would have never seen the floor.

Of course he is a coach, not a student-athlete. He will get the benefit of the doubt no matter how bad things look while Cooper and others have to sit in a timeout. It’s a farce.

Granted, this is just one of the ways that the NCAA screws over the student-athletes (ex: Austin Wiley, Daniel Purifoy in Chuck Person case) that make collegiate sports so great. Coaches can up and leave at anytime for a better job without repercussions while players have had to sit out a year — and have their loyalty somehow questioned — when deciding that a better situation awaits them at another school.

Eleven. That is how many games Cooper had to miss because … yeah, we still don’t know. During that time, some in the media said, and this is paraphrasing, “Of course, it’s Auburn. Just Auburn being Auburn. Just another case of the Tigers cheating. Hey, remember when they “cheated” their way to a title in football?”

Yet they are just following the NCAA’s lead. When it comes to coaches, it takes basically a guilty plea before any action is taken. For student-athletes, just a mere rumor and the investigative forces storm your campus faster than a SWAT team.

It’s all part of the hypocrisy that has become a running joke. While men like Wade and Miller continue to make the NCAA look like fools while collecting millions of dollars, student-athletes like Cooper continue to pay the price. It is the biggest sham in sports.