A case in point is this week's pat on the wrist to the University of South Carolina for the violation of 10 rules, five of which were determined to be major infractions. The list included, in the words of the NCAA, "impermissible tutoring for recruits ... unethical conduct by a USC official ... participation by an ineligible student athlete" and seven others, the last of which was lack of institutional control.

Sounds pretty strong, doesn't it? Yet the brunt of the penalties are the loss of two football scholarships in 2006-07, two more in 2007-08 and trimming recruiting visits on campus from 56 to 50 this year and next.

"This really doesn't hurt us, losing a couple scholarships," said football coach Steve Spurrier, as candid as ever.

Playing the game
The point is not that it should hurt; there's no attempt here to suggest South Carolina's football program should go to jail or that its coaches and administrators should be publicly flogged. This is just how it works when schools play the game the NCAA wants them to play.

If you ever heard Gamecocks fans say Clemson University got off easy back in 1990 when it was placed on probation, you get the context, and there is a connection. It isn't written anywhere, but there's a pattern to the way NCAA penalties work. Clemson's probation -- it was still allowed to go to bowl games and play on television, just like South Carolina under its penalties -- came the season after it parted company with football coach Danny Ford.

South Carolina's penalties came after an academic adviser, athletics director Mike McGee and football coach Lou Holtz departed.

This is generally the way it happens. Unspoken, unwritten rules determine the fate of most schools in these situations.

But while the way it works has some level of logic to it, you have to ask why the NCAA doesn't just codify its system for public consumption. No doubt, the organization is guided by legal advice, but at the end of the process you are left to think the NCAA likes operating within a veil of mystery and intrigue.

Perhaps it's best that a new gathering of personnel is in place at South Carolina and the message sent is one they all understand.

Certainly, the penalties are insignificant. Schools seldom use all 56 of their recruiting visits; some Division I-A coaches at high profile football schools have never used 56 visits in a single recruiting season. If you have room only to bring in, say, 20 freshmen, you might have to bring 40 on campus, but 56 is extreme.

And if you follow the standard operating procedure at most schools, this is the time of year when a couple of scholarships are often given out to players who walked on a year or two previously and have proven themselves to be contributing members to a football team. Schools most often leave room for a couple of scholarships for that very reason, so not having two of 85 is inconsequential.

Is that 84th and 85th scholarship really going to mean the difference in winning and losing? If the answer is yes, your football team is in big trouble.

Some credibility may be lost for an organization that announces five major penalties in addition to five secondary violations, then imposes sanctions that can barely be recognized, but this is the way the NCAA plays the game.

And let's face it, for an organization that cites nicknames as a primary source of censure, losing a little more credibility isn't really much of an issue.