With so much talk about players breaking NCAA rules, programs being in trouble, and schools losing national championships, everyone’s trying to figure out the problem. Is it the NCAA which is running a billion dollar business in which their laborers aren’t making any money while coaches and school presidents are rich? Is it the athletes who break rules put in place by the NCAA? Is it coaches who protect the players and the program? Those are all fair questions, and the answer is the blame can be shared pretty equally by all parties. But how about one other subsection that is hardly mentioned yet was brought up by Colt McCoy’s wife. Rachel McCoy, who dated Colt during his time at Texas (here are the pics to prove it), says it’s the adult men who offer the players gifts and other luxuries that are the problem.
Rachel called into a radio show to explain her stance. She says that grown men want to give players gifts so they can brag to their friends that they’re close to athletes.
“My biggest competition with Colt is not girls, it’s 40-year-old men who want to say ‘I did this with Colt.’ You have to go after these adult men and think about these kids. You cannot expect 19, 20-year-old kids to say no to free stuff when they’re in college. It’s silly and we really do need to hold these adults accountable,” Rachel McCoy said. “It’s not fair. There’s no way these college kids can really honestly say ‘no’ to some of this stuff because they don’t even know half the time, I’m convinced. There’s so many things with the NCAA they’re so careful about, but it’s hard for a lot of these guys to even know.”
Though Rachel’s intention was to attack the adults who are trying to leech off these players, she unintentionally could have gotten the Texas program in trouble. Here’s her other remark that’s getting some attention. “I saw so many of his teammates that maybe didn’t have some of that self control to say ‘no’ to somebody.”
What’s the statute of limitations for NCAA violations? It’s unfortunate she brought her husband’s program into the spotlight when that wasn’t her intention, but like I’ve said before, if you dig enough you can find violations at almost every major college football program, if not all of them. At this point it shouldn’t be about pointing fingers at programs, but about finding a better solution. We have some ideas for how to improve the system.
