$30k SEC Fine Leaves Urban Hurtin'
Enough is Enough. Their Coaches might be mad as hell but the SEC isn't going to take it anymore. As promised, the conference put some teeth into its reprimanding and has fined Urban Meyer $30,000 for his comments concerning a missed roughing the passer penalty against Georgia last weekend. Criticism of officials has become a coach’s pastime this season; Lane Kiffin and Dan Mullen had already been officially reprimanded in recent weeks. Then the SEC “cracked down” and strengthened its code of ethics, even threatening to suspend coaches. However, they don’t take that form of punishment very seriously in Gainesville, so the conference decided on a fine.
As Commissioner Mike Slive so eloquently put it:
“Coach Meyer has violated the Southeastern Conference Code of Ethics. SEC Bylaw 10.5.4 clearly states that the coaches, players and support personnel shall refrain from public criticism of officials. The league’s Athletics Directors and Presidents and Chancellors have made it clear that negative public comments on officiating are not acceptable.”
The significance of the fine is that there will no longer be empty reprimands coming from the league office and they will no longer tolerate having to defend accusations from three different school’s coaches in the same week. Commissioner Slive has fired a shot across the bow of all SEC coaches at the expense of the biggest dog in the SEC yard. They did so in hopes that every close loss, or large margin victory in Meyer’s case, would not have a shadow of scandal cast on it by a coach’s post game press conference.
The situation is like a dad on a family road trip, the SEC has been begging for quiet and for the kids in the back seat to get along. They said they were serious a couple times and even stared them down in the rear view mirror. They haven’t turned the damned car around as they've threatened but now they’ve finally pumped the brakes.
Credit goes to the SEC for bowing up to its big names when it said it would. Hopefully the measures taken should have immediate effect and there will be little controversy to come out of this weekend’s LSU/ Alabama matchup. Who would have guessed that the SEC’s “Kiffin Rule” would find its first victim in its namesake’s archrival Urban Meyer?
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