This is my shocked face: Tennessee avoids Bowl ban despite 200 known infractions
Among the penalties handed down, Tennessee has been placed on five years' probation, was given an $8 million fine among other financial penalties and will see a total reduction of 28 scholarships; the school was credited for its self-imposed 16-scholarship reduction over the past two seasons.
Scholarship reductions means nothing in the age of NIL.
I wouldn't be so quick to assume it's nothing. That's 28 times the amount of money needed to pay each player to forego a potential scholarship elsewhere in order to be a walk-on at Tennessee. Which needs to be paid on top of the "NIL" money everyone expects to receive now. It's a lot of money which otherwise could be used more productively elsewhere, assuming you can even find 28 players willing to take cash instead of a scholarship. Tennessee obviously has boosters willing to pay, but I don't think it's unlimited.
I think the scholarship limit means less at the high end now - players 86-100+ on the roster can now be induced to come to Michigan (and others) as a walk-on with NIL money to cover tuition, over being on scholarship at a different school. But I think those will often be transfers and bench guys. B1G/SEC starters are going to get scholarships AND NIL money, so to take scholarships away from a significant portion of the roster is some real punishment, though it ends up hurting student-athletes by taking away the total number of scholarship spots available, more than the schools and staff that committed violations.
Yeah but were they guilty of truly egregious offenses, like 15 minutes of extra practice time?
True. Double SEC Standards.
Don't worry, they'll make sure middle Tennessee gets hit HARD
It's SEC. Plus brings in too much money. No need to check for actual infractions. Just check the "economic contribution".
Anyone else surprised at $60K figure? I mean, if that's spread out over several people, families, not a ton to go around. Perhaps all they could find or substantiate?
Yes but did they commit any egregious violations like buying a recruit a hamburger?
Seriously, dude? Some hamburgers contain a lot of trans fat, sodium, and cholesterol. They were clearly looking out for student-athletes nutrition instead of rule breaking money being thrown around. What's wrong with that?
Surprise! That bag doesn't actually have hamburgers in it....
Word is if they break their probation by committing another "worst in 40 years" scandal they are going to be on an even longer probation!! Whoa boy this NCAA means business,
Yeah, but did they buy said recruits a burger. If not, nothing to see here.
Sorry I didn't see your comment until after I gave essentially the same comment.
Was it a nothing-burger?
So basically at this point the strategy is:
1) Cheat your ass off
2) Impose half-assed self imposed punishments
3) NCAA shrugs
That’s been the strategy for 20 or so years except among exceedingly pompous self-flagellation enthusiasts
Oh penalties still exist if you arent in the southern footprint.
Miami, Ole miss, Tenn., Bama etc you are good to go.
Maybe schools that arrogantly talk about how much they follow the rules have a hard time ignoring infractions when they caught cheating??
WATCH OUT - HE'S STEALING ALL THE BURGERS!!!
Stop! He's already dead!
Who cares if Tennessee paid players? I'm glad they didn't level a bowl ban, they don't deserve one.
Well technically this was pay to play, plus it was before NIL, but yeah, I guess there's no sporty for retroactive enforcement, which kinda makes you wonder why they bothered investigating in the first place, unless they just really didn't like Pruitt.
The goal was to fire Pruitt for cause and well...mission accomplished!
LOL!! And they wanted to hammer Harbaugh because he bought a burger. Why do our boosters still care about 'rules'?
It did have cheese on it
With NIL now what does the NCAA even do? Just disband and start a new league
Collect money and host 3 playoff games. That is all
I once worked with a guy who when he got an email with something that he didn’t feel like dealing with, he would just delete it and move on with his day. Universities should basically do that with the NCAA and their investigations these day.
Also that dude is now a successful CEO.
I do this with text messages all the time.
I think they basically do now, except it's more like "ignore it and let your lawyers deal with it".
I am Jack's utter lack of surprise.
This may be a cardinal sin to say but I hope if they meet again next year Ohio State brutalizes Georgia more than John Bonham did to his bass drums. All that $$$ thrown at the Georgia football program (including the illicit $s) sure helped Georgia kick Ohio Stat's butt by three touchdowns. Oh wait...
Clearly the only fat the NCAA really cares about is trans fat. So nice to know the NCAA cares about its student-athletes nutrition.
I get it and respect your take. I just can’t root for osu. I made that mistake in 2006 vs urban
Don't blame you one bit. The last game was as close to an asteroid game as we could get, I guess.
Yes because Ohio State is such a squeaky clean program.
Full disclosure: I live in the Knoxville area. (I live down the road from Phil Fulmer, who hired Pruitt.) I am a casual UT fan, but definitely not a diehard. From what I’ve observed, the university fully cooperated with the NCAA and tried to be as transparent and forthright as possible in a bad situation. Pruitt’s hiring was a mistake and the university moved swiftly against him and his staff when they were made aware of the violations. In my opinion, they handled the situation appropriately and the NCAA still came down pretty hard on them, but not as hard as they would have if TN hadn’t fully cooperated. As the ESPN article says, the NCAA is getting away from imposing bowl bans and is instead hitting schools with hefty fines and scholarship reductions, which they did to TN. I’m not really here to defend the program….bc I simply don’t care enough about it. Just some perspective from a diehard Michigan fan living in Tennessee.
As always, fuck Phil Fulmer
J.J. vs Joe in the title game is still on the table
Not so fast my friend. There are too many burger joints in AA and recruiting visits left to call this one.
This is actually interesting regarding how the NCAA is now approaching this.
Summarizing the breaking of rules:
- Tennessee had 18 of the highest level infractions the NCAA accounts for, 200 total with the lesser infractions.
- The head coach and his wife were directly tied to payments to players and their families. This is basically the worst possible breaking of rules, even if it was only $60K total..
- Two other coaches were involved enough to receive show-cause penalties.
Summarizing the penalty:
- The NCAA will impose a scholarship reduction of 28. This is basically a moot point with NIL now. So this is basically a who cares penalty.
- The school will not receive a bowl ban because the NCAA wants to move to a model which will not be punitive to existing players for past actions.
- The school is fined $8M because that, somehow, is the number created by the NCAA which is equivalent to what the benefit of the crime was.
- Three coaches receive show-cause with Pruitt being banned for the first year of any contract he signs with a school.
Looking at the money:
- The SEC payment to schools for the 2021/22 fiscal year was $49.9M
- Tennessee received an additional $4M from playing in the Orange Bowl
- Tennessee football reported a profit of $53.5M. ($91.6M total revenue, $38.1M expenses)
- The overall Tennessee athletics program reported total revenue of $136.8M and total expenses of $136.8M. Yes, apparently Tennessee athletics broke even to the dollar.
What is $8M worth to Tennessee? To the football program, absolutely nothing. They have more than enough money to cover based on expenses and the SEC payout alone. To the overall athletics department, a great deal, assuming a donor or two aren't going to walk in and write a check to cover the difference...which, yeah, it just means more.
Overall:
I tend to agree with this approach from the NCAA. Take away the money. I think the dollar values need to be significantly larger. $8M to a school like Tennessee is nothing. If they are going to get caught with a coach directly paying players, it needs to be a big fine.
I think it should be a formula based on profits over the period of time the cheating took place including all of the time the players involved are on the team
In this case, use the average annual profit from the total Pruitt era at Tennessee including the remaining years any of Pruitt's players are still on the team. Then take half of that number.
Assuming the average annual profits for football over that time is somewhere between $50 - $55M the penalty should be somewhere between $25 - $27.5M.
The question becomes, what does the NCAA do with that money?
If fines are less than what was made from breaking rules/regulations, then they're just the cost of doing business.
$8 million fine goes to where exactly?
Oh I bet I know. Into the "dont impose any real punishments on Tennessee here is some cash" fund. Some day this and all top end athletic departments are going to come crashing down as one huge slush fund to pay buddies err... admins positions and of course recruits.
The school will not receive a bowl ban because the NCAA wants to move to a model which will not be punitive to existing players for past actions.
--The current players were recruited by showing the achievements of past players who were given improper benefits. So flouting the rules helped them to get the current crop of players. I say ban the school and allow the players to transfer if they want.
Otherwise it does not make sense to punish anyone for any NCAA infractions. One is unlikely to get caught in flagrante delicto (not of the sexual kind). So the entity should be punished later in time.
I wonder if something similar to vacating wins but applied to profits would work better and have some teeth.
So, in this example, 53.5M/3, for a financial punishment of 17.8M. it's a large chunk but also doesn't decimate the program a la SMU (that should be save for a transgression like UNC).
Too harsh?
Tennessee State is about to get fucking nailed.
So their infractions were not a big fat nothing burger because that would mean they were cheeseburgers, and we all know how the NCAA will come hard (pun intended) for a school whose coach buys burgers.