The BCS has decided to fine the Fiesta Bowl $1 million but will allow it to remain in the BCS. This punishment didn't fit the crime and should be fired.
BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock said: ''The message is they had cleaned house and addressed their problems, but our group doesn't believe they went far enough."
The BCS didn't go far enough, either. First, $1 million is (sadly) a tiny fraction of the Bowl's $15 million net assets. Second, as mentioned in a previous HR Department firing, the Fiesta Bowl dumped its president after John Junker was implicated in a scheme to reimburse employees for campaign contributions with Fiesta Bowl money. He was also found to have used Bowl money to pay for things like strip club visits. If Junker had been the only bad boy, perhaps giving the Fiesta Bowl a spanking and sending it back to play in its giant money bin would have been fine. The problem is Junker was covering up campaign contributions for other people and he didn't attend that strip club by himself. Beyond that, an initial Bowl-sponsored investigation into Junker dismissed allegations of wrongdoing.
The BCS did recognize that the Fiesta Bowl's culture was rotten, and said the group will have to get a new accountant (PriceWaterhouseCoopers is clearly inadequate in covering up theft) and fire any board members who did anything wrong. That's all fine and well, but Junker and others were engaged in organization-wide wrongdoing that many people seemed to condone, ignore or covered up. What more should a bowl have to do to get kicked out of the BCS?
The NCAA is still deciding whether or not it wants to continue licensing the Fiesta Bowl and the No One Cares Bowl, also known as the Insight Bowl, which is run by Fiesta. Asking the NCAA to do the right thing and boot the Fiesta Bowl from the BCS is like asking Donald Trump to shut up, but these are strange times. Everything comes back to consequences, and right now a BCS member that flagrantly flaunts the laws of decency and common sense, not to mention the tax code, can apparently get away with a little bad publicity and a fine. When the punishment doesn't fit the crime, the crime doesn't stop. This inadequate punishment needs to be fired.
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