COLUMN: NCAA's lapse in judgement leaves only one victim in Fulton case

EDITOR'S NOTE: This column has been updated to address vague wording regarding the circumstances surrounding Saivion Smith's transfer from LSU in its initial posting.

The Fulton family was dealt a blow on Thursday evening when the NCAA denied an appeal for immediate eligibility. Sure, LSU is at a loss without the former high school All-American in its secondary for a pivotal season opener against Miami, one that is sure to set the tone for a critical campaign for the team’s head coach.

But there is truly only one victim here.

That, unfortunately, is Kristian Fulton, who has played in all of two games for the Tigers in his career. In February 2017, the NCAA slapped the then-rising sophomore with a two-year suspension for tampering with a drug test. Fulton wasn’t even allowed to be on the sidelines last fall during games. He watched alongside his father, Keith, from his dorm room.

LSU is in a unique position entering the 2018 campaign. There are a bevy of questions surrounding the team ahead of Ed Orgeron's second full season as the head coach, one of which lies in the secondary. If Fulton would be deemed eligible to play this season, there is little doubt that we would tab the LSU secondary as one of the best units in the country.

The Fulton family was anxious to see that come to fruition. In June 2017, they hired Don Maurice Jackson to take over the case. The Alabama-based attorney with The Sports Group turned to a New York forensics panel to uncover that there was errors in the NCAA’s drug test collection protocol, which Jackson deemed as enough to reinstate Fulton for this season.

Ultimately, it wasn’t enough to convince an NCAA committee otherwise. Fulton’s suspension was upheld. And while Jackson has already submitted the papers to appeal the ruling, the odds are certainly waning that Fulton will see the field in 2018.

The incident in itself begs a lot of questions. First and foremost, what is the precedent here?

If you’re waiting for a logical answer, you won’t get one here.

Oregon wide receiver Darren Carrington was suspended for the national championship game against Ohio State back in 2015. His crime: testing positive for marijuana during an NCAA drug test. A one-game ban for testing positive seems fitting, perhaps even more so when college football’s most sought-after prize is in the balance.

Arizona basketball player Allonzo Trier was suspended indefinitely after testing positive for PEDs in 2016. However, upon further inspection by the NCAA, Trier’s ban was lifted after a 19-game absence. The rationale: Trier unknowingly ingested the substance. Once his name was cleared, the NCAA reinstated him. He was later suspended again for committing the same offense.

Oklahoma defensive lineman Amani Bledsoe was hit with a one-year suspension after testing positive for PEDs. Again, it was argued that Bledsoe’s actions were not purposeful. Nonetheless, he was suspended for 10 games between his sophomore and junior seasons in 2016-2017.

The cases involving Carrington, Trier and Bledsoe all reveal lighter punishments for more severe actions. Fulton, an 18-year-old, tampered with his drug test, which is certainly worthy of a slap on the wrist. He did not fail a drug test, though. According to Jackson, he actually has taken between 33 and 40 drug tests and has not failed one. Yet somehow, Fulton’s suspension is longer and more harsh than any of these other college student-athletes.

The outpouring of support from current and former Tigers was astounding on Thursday night. That long list included several other New Orleans natives in the college ranks such as De’Jon Harris (Arkansas), Corione Harris (Kansas) and Tyron Johnson (LSU/Oklahoma State), as well as current members of the LSU football team such as John Battle and Jamal Pettigrew.

Perhaps the most noteworthy was from Saivion Smith, who signed with LSU in the same class as Fulton back in 2016. Last spring, around the same time that Fulton was issued his suspension, Smith transferred out of Baton Rouge and enrolled at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College.

Smith spent one season at the junior college level before signing back to the SEC with defending national champion Alabama.

Specific circumstances around that decision and path remain vague, but he and his family drew parallels on Twitter this week in support of Fulton.

"All teams have the same protocol in place," Saivion's father, Amp Smith, posted on Twitter. "Some kids learn from their mistakes. Smith and Fulton have learned. One chose to go JUCO, and the other didn't. For the record, Smith never failed an NCAA test."

The younger Smith has never been sidelined as a result of whatever "mistakes" he committed and is expected on the field Sept. 1 when the Crimson Tide opens its 2018 season against Louisville.

He will be eligible to declare for the NFL Draft after this season in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

But after navigating through his own detours over the past 18 months but taking a different path, Saivion Smith put it best when he stated, ”This is out of hand.”

It is. Smith will be preparing for his first NFL action by the time Fulton will really just be beginning his collegiate career.

Fulton made the typical mistake expected from an 18-year-old getting accustomed to life as a college student-athlete. He didn’t commit a felony, a misdemeanor or a chargeable offense; he had a lapse in judgement.

In the professional ranks, tampering with a drug test is considered the same as testing positive. Under the same protocol, the penalty in MLB is half a season, which amounts to 81 games. In the NFL, it’s a six-game ban, which counts as 37.5 percent of the regular season.

If the same logic was applied to NCAA football, Fulton would have been ruled eligible to play when LSU hosted Auburn last year on Oct. 14, according to MLB’s standards. The same punishment would have applied under the NFL’s protocol. Yes, we’re starting to sense a theme here: A six-game ban would seem to be the standard.

What stings the most is that we sometimes fail to acknowledge the true victim here. It’s easy to get caught up with the need for another talented cornerback to plug in opposite Greedy Williams this season. It’s more difficult to consider how Fulton has felt watching his team’s games from his dorm room each and every Saturday, quietly hoping that the NCAA would overturn his decision as it has for other student-athletes elsewhere in the country.

Public opinion is strongly in Fulton’s corner because of the young man’s loyalty. He didn’t take the junior college route; he wanted to play defensive back for LSU. The NCAA has single-handedly turned that into an insurmountable hill to climb with another obstacle along the path. The fans aren’t the ones being tormented. Neither is the LSU football team. Only Fulton and his family are the victims of this wrongdoing.

A former Rivals 4-star cornerback and the No. 1 recruit out of Louisiana back in 2016, Fulton was on the way to being a critical piece of the Tigers’ secondary in 2017 and in 2018. Unfortunately, this minor mishap has left us wondering “when?” above anything else.

LSU Athletics has since modified its substance-abuse policy because of the unfair positions in which it has left Fulton. The “first term enrollee” policy states that a student-athlete can fail three drug tests — not two — before a fourth leads to 10 percent loss of competition. That amounts to one game. It also states that a student-athlete that goes four consecutive months without a negative test will have prior tests expunged. The policy used to be six months.

LSU has already taken the first step toward improving its drug-testing protocol. Such is commendable for future student-athletes, but leaves Fulton on the outside looking in.

The NCAA — in typical fashion — remains as disjointed as ever. It follows no logic and no precedent, lacks adequate judgement and seemingly picks and chooses its victims.