Collegiate Times

Correction: This story has been modified from its original version. — This story has been modified from its original version. A clause in the first sentence implying the NCAA was looking into the allegations has been removed. The NCAA compliance officials who spoke with the Collegiate Times directed inquires to Virginia Tech's compliance office. The Collegiate Times apologizes for this error.

Promotional materials featuring several football players used to advertise for parties in the Norfolk and Virginia Beach areas have surfaced. The posters feature Tyrod Taylor and Kam Chancellor among others, and some of the photos show them in their Tech uniforms with their university emblems clearly present. Some of these photos were visible on Taylor's Facebook page earlier this week.

While it isn't yet clear whether these materials are an NCAA violation, as soon as the pictures and materials were reported to the university, they were promptly removed from the Internet. Unfortunately, when student athletes exhibit questionable behavior, much of the responsibility falls back on the university. If these promotional pictures end up violating NCAA rules, Tech would take the blame under clauses ambivalently titled "lack of institutional control" and "failure to monitor."

Tech cannot be expected to control when Taylor and Chancellor host a party that happens at a commercial venue as it has nothing to do with the university. When three years ago members of the student body started a Web site advocating support for the recruitment of Taylor (also a hypothetical NCAA violation), that shouldn't be the university's responsibility, either.   

The university is being asked to control things it cannot possibly monitor and then punished when students violate the rules.

It is not Tech's fault that so many players on our football team grew up playing football together and decided to throw parties. While promoting these parties with materials linked to Tech was a poor decision, the fault shouldn't lie with the university and its inability to closely monitor these players outside of school.

The NCAA issues sanctions on an individual basis, but the accusation of a "lack of institutional control" is based on a foolish rule in place to see universities fail.

While Taylor's name was on the promotional material for a party he was promoting and said to be hosting (whether he benefited monetarily or otherwise), that is not Tech's fault.

In their current form, the rules are not set up in a way that makes any sort of sense in terms of personal accountability.

Hopefully the NCAA will use this situation as a test case in terms of realizing how little authority a university really has to monitor students in their personal lives. The rules need to be flexible in terms of not holding the university wholly responsible for the actions of its student athletes.

The editorial board is composed of David Grant, David Harries, Laurel Colella and Debra Houchins.