Auburn Hires NCAA Director of Enforcement

Apr 4, 2013; Atlanta, GA, USA; NCAA president Mark Emmert’s enforcement team continues its trend of turnover (and turmoil). Credit: USA Today Sports Images.

It’s not as if late night talk show comedy writers needed any more ammunition from the NCAA and its rules and enforcement arm. Yet they received it over the last week when former NCAA director of enforcement Dave Didion left his post to take a position at Auburn, as first reported by USA Today.

Because… well, of course he did. Imagination be damned.

What’s next? Mark Emmert heading to Miami as the director of athletics?

Then again, Auburn — or the NCAA, for that matter — caring about public perception now would fly directly in the face of the very image the two have built over the past few years.

The move itself is not nearly as juicy or scandal-soaked as the headline, which comes just days after Selena Roberts released her now famous allegation-laced report on Auburn football. And, yes: many of the former Auburn players quoted in the report have since claimed they were misquoted or were misled on the purpose of the interviews.

Ever since Auburn made its 2010 BCS championship run — behind Heisman Trophy winner and human lightning rod QB Cam Newton — the Tigers have been viewed as one of the true bad boys of college athletics. The NCAA’s futile, Wile E. Coyote-like attempts at catching both Auburn and Miami have left numerous critics wondering if NCAA President Emmert is the right man for the job.

Back to Didion: In the USA Today story, he called the decision “personal.” He also worked for Auburn for five years in the 1990s before taking a role at the NCAA. There is no evidence to suggest any improprieties whatsoever, though conspiracy theorists and those naturally skeptical of the NCAA will allow their imaginations to run wild.

Though Didion’s situation appears to be innocent, it can’t help but raise eyebrows when two NCAA investigators have been fired in little more than a year. A third retired. The former VP of enforcement, Julie Roe Lach, was fired in light of the mishandling of the Miami investigation.

This isn’t exactly another black eye for the NCAA — then, when one has two black eyes already, how does one gain another? — but it certainly doesn’t help an image-conscious governing body gain any relief.