Bryson DeChambeau v NCAA: My Take

By Elizabeth Bethel | Sep 29, 2015

Bryson DeChambeau is just about the hottest commodity in men’s amateur golf right now and the SMU rising senior was all set for a dynamite of a senior year until the NCAA handed down a set of sanctions that punished SMU student-athletes for the misconduct of a coach who’s no longer coaching.

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DeChambeau, the recent bright light on a losing United States 2015 Walker Cup team, has piled up the honors this year. He won the 2015 NCAA Division I individual men’s championship — I’m still smiling when I remember his amazing strip tease before he waded into a hazard to save a shot on his way to a victory over Cheng-Tsung Pan — and then went on to become only the 5th man to back up that win with his US Amateur victory.

So long as he maintains his amateur status, those wins got Dechambeau invites to the 2016 Masters, US Open and Open Championship. But through no fault of his own DeChambeau’s not going to be allowed to defend his NCAA title at the 2016 NCAA Division I Golf Championship, a defense that in many respects would have been the capstone of an exemplary collegiate golf career.

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SMU got hit this week by the NCAA with big penalties for now-gone coach Josh Gregory’s recruiting infractions and the bottom line for DeChambeau in the NCAA sanctions is that no member of the SMU men’s golf team will be allowed to participate in any post-season play.

SMU, which has 15 days to appeal the NCAA ruling, has issued a statement making clear the University’s position on the post-season play ban:

"“[SMU] strongly disagrees with the postseason ban for men’s golf as the discipline is punitive for every student-athlete and coach, none of whom were involved in the infractions.”"

The NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions found that former SMU head golf coach Josh Gregory committed multiple recruiting infractions that included impermissible contacts with recruits and their parents and offering University merchandise and golf equipment to recruits at a significant discount.

Gregory has resigned and is currently working with junior golfers in the Dallas area. He won’t be eligible to return to coaching in an NCAA program until September 2019, so none of the sanctions against SMU will directly impact his coaching career, so long as he sidesteps collegiate coaching.

The University’s golf program, however, will suffer grievously. In addition to the prohibition against post-season play the golf program has lost 12% of its available golf scholarships and the NCAA has set limits on visits by prospective students and contact with prospective students for the next three years.

This certainly isn’t the first time the NCAA has come down on a university with its oversized sledge hammer for various ethical and moral violations. Perhaps, most famously, its sanctions against Penn State in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal followed a similar pattern — banning post-season play and reducing scholarships, as well as vacating 111 wins accumulated by Joe Paterno (although when legally challenged that sanction was reversed).

To be sure, the SMU violations are hardly comparable to the Penn State sexual crimes, but in both cases the real losers are the school’s student-athletes whose collegiate careers are cut short by the misconduct of the coaches entrusted with their training and charged with compliance to reasonable standards of ethical conduct.

Bryson DeChambeau has a bright future ahead of him. There’s little doubt that he’ll turn pro at the 2016 Open Championship after the completion of play. I hope SMU will do the right thing on behalf of their star student-athlete and challenge a sanction that is fundamentally unfair and results in the punishment of student-athletes who have done no wrong.

Next: Is Jordan Spieth the Next Tiger Woods?

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