Colorado's Probation Was Avoidable

There's a phrase that goes "the perfect is the enemy of the good". In college athletics, the NCAA often expects perfection with rules compliance from schools. when they aren't perfect, they suffer.

We told you recently about LSU's inability to provide peanut butter to its athletes so as to avoid NCAA scrutiny. Now, Colorado's been placed on two years probation after confusion led to them undercharging athletes for athletic department provided meals. It is that confusion which has a former Colorado staffer thinking probation was avoidable.

David Hansburg thinks CU administrators eventually might have realized the issues stemmed from unclear wording in a contract between the athletic department and its food vendors.

"Had the contract been worded differently, and it clearly stated what the food value of the meal was, we would not have been in violation,'' said Hansburg, CU's director of football operations for five seasons under former coach Gary Barnett and one season under current coach Dan Hawkins. "I think 95 percent of the universities out there would have looked at all the evidence available and not considered it a violation. "(But) we called the fire department, and they're going to come."

Simple confusion once again may have trampled an athletic department otherwise doing its best to reasonably provide for its athletes.

It gets better after the jump - learn about how some athletes skipped meals altogether.
Hansburg further elaborates on where it all went wrong:

he said the discrepancy came in the difference between what the meals cost the athletic department and their actual worth. Hansburg said what the contract with vendors identified as a $14 meal included labor expenses, equipment, etc.

"The value of the food was $4," he said. "If a kid pays $7, we are not in violation."

Freshman football walk- ons who lived in dormitories were encouraged to buy a full meal plan, which allowed them to eat at the training table once a day if they could not get to another dorm serving a meal.

Until about 2000, Hansburg said no dorms were available in-season for walk-ons at the dinner hour. But with one dorm serving dinner, the NCAA ruled a walk-on had an option - if he believed he could shower, reach the dorm during serving hours, then return to the Dal Ward Athletics Center for study table.

"A lot of kids just weren't eating - and I told that to the NCAA," said Hansburg, noting he believed CU had similar training-table practices as far back as 1996. The NCAA scrutinized a period from 2000-2005 and said 133 student-athletes from six sports were undercharged $61,700.

That's an awesome quote. Read that again: "a lot of kids just weren't eating".

The NCAA gets credit for giving the walk-ons an option, but at the end of the day it sounds like they had to rush to practice, eat and study. Not the heaviest burden in the world, but it reeks of inflexibility on the part of either Colorado or the NCAA. Rational choice for some athletes meant skipping meals, which is troubling.

(H/T: Larry Brown)

Previously at FanHouse:
NCAA President Myles Brand is Paid $895,000 to do What, Exactly?
NCAA Weary of Peanut Butter, Doesn't Mind Weed
NCAA Absurdity on Display With Supplement Issues
Colorado Feeds its Players too Much