Recently, the University of Oregon became the latest major college athletic program to feel the wrath of the National Collegiate Athletic Association for violations committed by its football program.

The Ducks and former coach Chip Kelly, who conveniently took the head coaching job with the National Football League’s Philadelphia Eagles in January, had come under fire for paying a Houston-based recruiting service which was connected to a recruit who had committed to play for Oregon.

Any time money is involved under the table, the NCAA gets mad. This time, they got so mad that they slapped Oregon with a loss of a scholarship each of the next two seasons and three years probation.

Boy, that’s really putting your foot down, isn’t it?

Of course, the NCAA also put an eighteen-month show-case penalty on Kelly, meaning he cannot take a college coaching job during that time period. But now that Kelly is making millions in Philly, that show-cause is just about useless.

This isn’t the first time a coach has bolted to escape sanctions (if you can call what the NCAA did to Oregon as such). In 2010, right around the time Southern California was about to get hit hard due to many serious violations involving running back Reggie Bush, then-head coach Pete Carroll was hired by the Seattle Seahawks. USC fell into mediocrity while Carroll is building a contender in Seattle. It just doesn’t feel right that a coach can leave and essentially get off scot-free while the players he recruited and mentored suffer.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much anyone can do to stop them. The NCAA, NFL, and other sports leagues are private entities that conduct their own business. The NCAA can’t tell a team they can’t hire a coach because the NCAA thinks the coach did something wrong.

Coaches are people too. They have families to support and bills to pay, so they’re going to do what’s in their best financial interest, fairly or unfairly. As long as that is so, there won’t be a practical solution to cases like Carroll and Kelly.

I may have criticized former Wolfpack football head coach Tom O’Brien for the product on the field, but off the field, the man ran a clean program. And I have no doubts that Dave Doeren will do the same in his first year with the program.

Meanwhile, people will continue to criticize the inconsistency of the NCAA in doling out punishments. Sure, they’ll nail USC because Bush accepted a bunch of unauthorized gifts, but what happens when trouble arises in the classroom? Do I even need to mention the saga that went on at UNC-Chapel Hill that unfolded before our very eyes last year? 

For more than decade UNC-CH offered a plethora of no-show classes which helped athletes stay eligible. Connections were discovered between Julius Nyang’oro, the professor behind the classes, and people close to the Tar Heel football program. This wasn’t just a couple guys receiving tutoring–this was entire classes not happening, yet athletes and other students somehow getting A’s.

And what did NCAA president Mark Emmert do about it? He basically waved his arm like a cop directing traffic away from an accident and said, “Move along folks, nothing to see here.”

Compare that to N.C. State basketball getting a postseason ban in 1990 for players selling shoes, or more recently, Ohio State football getting a bowl ban for a few players trading memorabilia for tattoos. No academic cheating. Nobody is getting paid to come play for a certain school. Really, there’s no competitive advantage in the athletic venue.

But heaven forbid an athlete actually has to go to class and do his own work. The NCAA doesn’t care about that, as evidenced by its handling of the UNC fiasco. What it does care about is one thing—money. That part is obvious.

What’s not so obvious is what will happen to the next school that gets nabbed for violations. It could be serious, like Ohio State or USC, or it could be a light slap on the wrist, like with Oregon.

You just never know with the NCAA.