Got To Respect Cincinnati Trying To Fly Under The Radar With Their System Of Fining Their Players

Source- While Virginia Tech on Thursday discontinued one system of fining its football players and denounced another, Cincinnati is embracing a similar concept.

A day after Virginia Tech assistant coach Bud Foster commented that players' newly acquired benefit of a cost-of-attendance stipend could be subject to fines from the coaching staff, VT athletic director Whit Babcock said not only that the Hokies' coaching staff would do no such thing, but that a current practice of fining players by deducting from players' bowl-game stipends would end as well.

Babcock told The Roanoke Times he met with coach Frank Beamer and Foster and ended the possibility of the cost-of-attendance fines.

"... that was Bud speaking alone and proposing something," Babcock said in part. "But nobody had gotten fined under the new system and we squashed it."

Cincinnati coach Tommy Tuberville takes a contrasting view. While the Bearcats' coach doesn't plan to fine his players, he is considering a withholding of cost-of-attendance stipend funds for violations of various kinds, according to ESPN.com.


Can we agree to put down the lit torches and pitchforks for this one? You don't have to agree with fining players that already get very little reimbursement for making college athletics a billion dollar business. In fact, you shouldn't agree with it. It's actually insane to agree that players that are given the most minimal of living expenses should have to worry about getting it taken away for showing up late to study hall.  However, if you are going to institute a system of monetary penalties I think we can all agree that Cincinnati picked the perfect time to do so. Hell, I almost missed it completely. Virginia Tech has already rebuked installing any such system, yet they will forever be known as the school that started this absurd form of discipline. Meanwhile, Cincinnati has no plans to stop taking their players money, but no even realizes that because they are still focusing on how ridiculous Virginia Tech's list of finable offenses happens to be.

Let that be a lesson to everyone. If you are going to do something that nearly everyone is going to disagree with, just make sure you are the second person to do it. That way everyone unleashes all of their outrage on the first party, and has none left for you. By the time people found out that Cincinnati has a reprehensible football program, every one had already chastised the the idea of fines while dragging Virginia Tech's name through the mud in the process. They aren't going to go back and discuss it AGAIN, just to make sure people know Tommy Tuberville is an idiot too. Also, it doesn't hurt if their is visual evidence surrounding the first person to do it, and all you have is words taken from an interview that took place when everyone was distracted by a laminated list of stupidity. Trust Ray Rice on this one, it's always worse when we can actually see it with our own two eyes. Just ask Cincinnati. The school that managed to fly under the radar while every media outlet in America was kicking Virginia Tech right in the dick. No words, no matter how detrimental, can take the focus off of an entire menu of transgressions that most college kids commit on a weekly, if not daily, basis...