NCAA, how I loathe thee sometimes...

So I don't know if you keep up with college football, but my dear Trojans got slapped with quite a harsh sentence in the post season after the NCAA looked into our program for 4 years and found 2 players had received improper benefits from agents. Now, I am not saying they don't deserve to be punished, it's just that they can't be punished because the culprits (Reggie Bush and OJ Mayo) are currently out of the NCAA's reach and making millions. So they went after the only player they could and it was USC. I realize full well that USC was probably not 100% clean in all of this, but I do think the punishment was a bit harsh - a loss of scholarships, 2 year bowl ban and vacated wins from the years Reggie played and received the benefits. One of the phrases the NCAA used was "a lack of institutional control" about the USC athletic department.

Then, during the summer I am at the gym and watching ESPN when I see a very interesting story running on the ticker on the bottom of the screen. It said that about 10 UVA football players had received improper benefits as well and the NCAA was looking into it. Hmm, funny that it wasn't headline news like it was for USC and they had way more people involved. Ok, well, I expected to hear a harsh sentence concerning them sometime soon.

Fast forward to this morning and I'm reading the LA Times sports page and turns out 2 of their players are only having to deal with a 4 and 6 game ban. The others are being investigated, but if found to have received said benefits, they only have to pay back some of what they took and give it to a charity.

Now, am I the only one who sees a major discrepancy here?? USC was not the victim yes, I'll give you that, but seems that after investigating the school for FOUR years and only finding 2 players, whereas UVA has about TEN might mean that it's UVA with the "lack of institutional control" and not USC. Again, USC was not innocent and they do need to watch their marquee players more, but ONE versus TEN is a BIG difference in my mind. No bowl bans, no vacated wins, no scholarships lost, in fact, those players that broke the rules will still get to play in this season. Awesome. Thanks NCAA for being fair all across the board.

Still annoyed, but then again, can't do anything about it, so oh well. And with that, I leave you with a commercial about why I love sports and ESPN:

Aaaaaaand take two...

So it's been a few weeks but I just wanted to give a quick update on what's been going on at USC!

- A girl named Melody gave her life to Christ a couple weeks ago!! We had a 3 hour dinner and I shared the gospel with her and we talked about a lot of hard things, but by the end of it she was ready to commit!! God is so good :)

- I walked by one of the dorms last week and there was a guy who was yelling the Tarzan call "OOOWWAAAAOOOHHHHH" (spelling??) and saying "TARZAN LIVES!!! have fun in class" and it made me laugh out loud and love the fact that I work at a college campus

- I've experienced some heartache as well because 2 of the girls from last year are taking steps to walk away from their relationship with Christ and I have been sharing truth with them but they seem set on doing things their own way. Sometimes I really wish I had the power to change hearts, but thankfully God does, as it says in Proverbs 21:1, "The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases."

- got to see a "performance piece" yesterday in front of Tommy Trojan as a guy was "showing" the campus the divide between being 100% connected to the world at all times through texting, email and Facebook, but how we've never been more isolated, like there's an invisible wall between people. He "demonstrated" this by having a door frame with a plastic door and running into it over and over and over and over. It was pretty awesome.

and that is just a taste of life at USC!! I'll update later!!

fight on