Monson: Dark clouds of smoke are rising at BYU. Is there a fire?

Armageddon has come to BYU basketball. Armageddon Light. OK, so it’s not Armageddon at all. But it is explosive and it is serious and it is embarrassing, and, taken to the extreme, it raises suspicions about the future of sports at the LDS Church-owned school.

There are, indeed, dark clouds of smoke wafting out of the Marriott Center today, wafting out of the tailpipe of a Volkswagen Jetta driven by a player who might not have properly paid for it, receiving it instead from an overly friendly booster.

Dark clouds of possible NCAA violations.

There are no hookers involved here, no paying a player $100,000 via a shoe company or a coach to come to the school, no FBI investigation for fraud or violating federal laws.

But Dave Rose’s basketball program is facing trouble beyond competitive shortcomings of its past, such as going 21-11 every year and then almost never doing anything substantial in the postseason, never going to a Final Four, never winning a West Coast Conference tournament.

This is worse.

Especially for a school that professes to have a higher moral code than other less-enlightened places. BYU has never been perfect in its sometimes-rough-and-tumble harnessing of sports and behavioral codes and religion.

But this could be a significant disconnection of propriety and impropriety as it pertains to basketball, a BYU athlete and NCAA rules, having a booster, right under the coaches’ noses, apparently give a player — junior guard Nick Emery — benefits far in excess of mere cost of attendance stipends and scholarship money.

Emery’s seeming acceptance of such bennies is being investigated by the NCAA and BYU — for infractions that include Emery receiving free trips, free use of a car, free concerts, free food, among other gifts, by a booster — Brandon Tyndall — who is a travel company executive and a member of BYU’s booster group, the Cougar Club.

Yeah, that is a problem, no matter whether it is simply the isolated actions of a rogue booster and player, no matter if coaches, staff members, administrators or other players knew about it or not.

That makes it no less permissible. And if they did know about it, that makes it a much bigger problem, stirring questions that begin with this: If it happens once, does it happen twice or three times or four?

Either way, “BYU under NCAA investigation” is a headline the school’s board of trustees, made up of the highest ecclesiastical leaders of the LDS Church, will not read easily. There have been troubling moments in the past, but this investigation could have some bite to it.

If it verifies violations, there’s no telling exactly how the NCAA, based on its soft reactions to some past improprieties at other schools, will react. It could suspend Emery for a few games, it could suspend him for the season, it could punish the program as a whole.

But Rose and BYU athletics officials should worry more about what the guys up at 47 East South Temple will think and how they will react to this kind of information. They see the smoke, too, and feel its effects. It’s one thing to lose games, the way the BYU football team is doing this season. It’s another to be seen as an entity that isn’t worth the negative news and the headaches it creates.

It’s a perception thing as much as an honor thing.

It’s worth remembering that sports at other LDS-owned-and-operated universities — including BYU-Idaho and BYU-Hawaii — have been shut down by the same church leaders who may be put off by this particular case.

Cheating by athletes and whoever else at or around BYU is not part of the religion’s hope for positive national exposure when it comes to Cougar sports. If it’s against the school’s behavioral code to drink coffee or to wear beards, what does it say when established organizational rules are being ignored and broken?

It says somebody or somebodies with the power to do so can use that power when pressed or embarrassed to alter the scope and the very existence of big-time sports at BYU. It is a top-down power to which even well-entrenched university folks in Provo must acquiesce.

GORDON MONSON hosts “The Big Show” with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone.