Beginning of the end at NCAA HQ?

After 12 years in newspapers, I can tell you that this rule of thumb almost never lets you down: When people feel the need to respond to critics with a lengthy clarifying statement like this, someone's going down, and they're not named Cam Newton.

Usually it's the person who put out the statement, but surely NCAA President Mark Emmert, hired in April, is too new for the ax to fall on him. But people who get out-flanked by Cecil Newton shouldn't keep their jobs. And this line, seemingly from Kevin Lennon in the gray sidebar on Emmert's statement, has an air of defensiveness that seldom springs from or engenders job security:

While comparisons may be human nature, they should at least be made based on the facts.

Translation: It's not me, it's all of you. Good luck with that attitude.

As usual, The Senator asks the appropriate questions:

If Emmert thinks the amateurism rules need strengthening, whose fault is that?

... somehow, I’m supposed to believe that Cecil Newton is smart enough to game the system to confound two of the shrewder groups of people on the planet, but not smart enough to profit from it. Does that makes sense to anyone not named Mark Emmert or Mike Slive?