BYU Puts Honor Code Over Potential Final Four Appearance

As most of our bloggers are BYU graduates we often comment on times when BYU makes the news here, and if you follow college basketball at all you know that BYU is having possibly its best season ever in men's basketball.  The team is ranked #3 in the country, their point guard Jimmer Ferdette is the leading candidate for national player of the year honors, and the team is likely to get a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament later this month.

The big story to me, however, isn't the success on the court but rather the commitment to the schools very rigorous honor code.  From the Salt Lake Tribune:

Three days after recording the biggest regular-season win in program history, a win over San Diego State that propelled the BYU basketball team to a No. 3 national ranking and into serious consideration for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, the Cougars’ postseason hopes were dealt a devastating blow. Starting center Brandon Davies was dismissed from the team on Tuesday because he ran afoul of the school’s strict honor code. BYU announced in a terse news release that Davies, a 6-foot-9 sophomore from Provo High, “will not represent the university on the men’s basketball team throughout the remainder of the 2010-11 season” because of a “violation of the BYU Honor Code.”

Among other things, the code forbids premarital sex, the use of alcohol and illegal drugs, and cheating on schoolwork.

So let's get one thing straight:  the honor code is strict but not draconian.  Davies did not get booted from the basketball team for sipping a coffee, swearing, or growing a beard.  BYU never reveals details about honor code issues to the public, so unless Davies talks we'll never know what he did.

The amazing thing to me is that BYU is actually getting a lot of respect in some media outlets for their actions.  For example, here is a clip from ESPN singing BYU's praises:


BYU put their standards before fame and fortune, and I applaud them for it.

When Live Doesn't Exactly Mean Live

Do you see the word "LIVE" in gold letters in the upper right hand corner of that screen to the right? I did and I thought to myself, "Wow, I'm watching the American 400m free relay as it happens!" Well, as it turns out NBC was lying to me - along with tens of millions of other Americans in the Mountain and Pacific time zones.

Let's start this story 8 years ago in Sydney, Australia. NBC had paid $3.5 billion dollars to have exclusive broadcast rights for the 2000 - 2008 Olympics and here was their first big chance to cash in on that huge investment. However, due to the fact that the Earth is round, when it was prime-time in Sydney, it was sleepy-time in the US. This forced NBC to show most of the major events on a tape-delay. Now maybe it's just coincidence or maybe the Sydney games were just really boring, but those games turned out have the worst TV ratings in modern history.

Fast forward 8 years and NBC is faced with the same problem. Unwilling to endure poor ratings again, NBC puts enormous pressure on the International Olympic Committee and the Beijing organizers to move some events to the morning in Beijing so they will be live in prime-time for the US. Beijing and the IOC play ball and so you and I get to see some of the big events live.

But that's not exactly the truth. What NBC is really doing in showing those events live in the Eastern and Central time zones and then on tape-delay in the Mountain and Pacific time zones. And what really bothers me is that they still advertise it as live. I can deal with tape-delays. What I can't stomach is the word "LIVE" in golden letters flashing on my screen when I know that the event I'm watching happened 3 hours ago.

I just wish NBC wasn't a liar.