To establish my biases so you can judge (or ignore) my comments:
  I have a very strong interest in College Hockey and have been instilled
with Coach Mason's comments and behavior that what is good for College
Hockey (or hockey in general) is also good for the CCHA and MSU.  I also
have a strong interest is Shawn Walsh for perhaps some obvious reasons.
I followed both h
the Maine and MSU proceedings quite closely because of my interests both
places.  AND I have few facts, especially about the Maine case beyond the
public information that everyone has had access to.  With that said:
 
The facts of the cases were quite different - to make a judgement without
more "inside" information is impossible for me, and I think most others, so
whether the punishements were equitable, I would have to leave in the a~ hands
of others and in particular with the NCAA personnel who had to make those
decisions.  Both schools are NCAA members and have agreed to abide by
those decisions - both have several avenues of input into NCAA governance
if they choose to exercise it.  So, those were the penalties that someone
decided were appropriate - both schools had/have access to an appeal process
(I understand MSU will not appeal, Maine did and I believe won some
concession - but all that is all irrelevant - fairness existed at that point in
the process.
 
As I see it, both schools spent substantial amounts of money, time and
effort on their cases (actual amounts are irrelvant in my opinion), both
schools self-imposed significant penalties, made substantial personnel and
operational changes and as far as I can see, both submitted substantial
self-incriminating reports, including items that no outside agency (including
the NCAA) would have been able to discover on their own.
 
Press reporting, especially at the time of the NCAA sanction release, did
not do well with the self-imposed penalties in either case.  I am unable
to assess the relative severity of the penalties and suggest that perhaps
only the NCAA personnel can, and presumable have.  Both schools have
suffered embarrassment and penalties (that were presumably fairly assessed)
and it is time for both to get a healing process underway.
 
Sorry for the discourse, but we need no more divisiveness.
 
I wish the best for the University of Maine, and the hockey program in
particular.  I will be following it with a special interest and hope its
experience and recovery will set a good example for others to follow.
 
One final note - it seems to me that the NCAA is stressing more internal
accountability and monitoring and both cases seemed to exhibit that
tendency which may be a better solution than we currently have for
resolving recruiting violations.  The NCAA book is too full for anyone
to have a chance for a "clean" program.  Perhaps these two schools have
helped to establish an improved process that will eliminate the need for
all those rules that were implemented for a particular case, then applied
in general to all cases leading to a lot of unfairness.  I do hope
MSU will use this incident to assume substantially more responsibility
for itself than it has in the past.
 
-glen-
 
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