Three Ohio State Basketball Players Are Ruled Ineligible Due To Meeting ESPN Gameday Staff

[The Lantern] - One football recruit and a group of three men’s basketball recruits went on their official visits to Ohio State and took trips to the set of College GameDay before the football team’s game against Oklahoma on Sept. 9.

Both parties walked onto the stage of College GameDay and met with former Ohio State quarterback and ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit, former Ohio State running back and celebrity guest picker Eddie George and two other ESPN analysts. The visits, it turns out, weren’t permitted, and Ohio State ended up self-reporting three NCAA violations for reach program.

It declared the three prospects ineligible, requiring Ohio State to apply for reinstatement for the student-athletes involved in the violation from the NCAA Student-Athlete Reinstatement staff. This specific sanction matches what Ohio State self-imposed in its punishment of the football program.

Good for the NCAA here. You know, you can’t just be going and meeting Gameday staff members all willy nilly and get away with it. I mean, I think the ineligibility isn’t tough enough or a severe enough punishment. Should probably ban these kids from ever playing college ball due to this egregious act.

/Okay that’s enough sarcasm for me.

Holy shit, the NCAA continues to be a laughing stock. I get in the grand scheme of things this is nothing and the players will be declared eligible after the appeal happens. But, this is outrageous. It’s also quite muddy. The rules state that you are allowed to meet former players while on official visits – Eddie George and Kirk Herbstreit are just that. However, it’s stated that you can’t meet with the media and the NCAA declares that they are media because they are on Gameday’s staff.

The three basketball players that were on this visit were Luther Muhammad, Elijah Weaver and Jaedon Lee. The other person involved here is football player Micah Parsons, who has now committed to Penn State. Ohio State’s football program self-reported the violation and because of that they were forced to stop recruiting Parsons. Think about that for a second. Simply meeting Herbstreit and George – who let’s be honest, don’t really give a shit to influence these guys – caused Parsons to be deemed ineligible to play for Ohio State. What if that was his dream school?

I’ve been on Twitter saying I’m going to storm the NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis to overthrow Mark Emmert and become commissioner of college basketball. I’m starting to think I just need to be NCAA President at this stage. At some point can we start to update the most outdated rule book in sports? Or are we still just going to pretend like everything is okay while the schools profit on these kids who get punished for meeting Kirk Herbstriet and Eddie fucking George?