I was just about to post. Here is the NCAA press release: http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/ncaa/resources/latest+news/2012/march/unc+receives+postseason+ban+scholarship+reductions
Too bad for UNC that they don't have the NCAA connections that OSU had. They got stiffer penalties for much smaller crimes. OSU's crimes involved a head coach gaining a significant competitive advantage by covering up violations. UNC's involved players getting relatively small amounts of money from agents and an assistant coach who was fired immediately when it was discovered that he worked for one. OSU, on the other hand, tried to get away with slapping themselves on the wrist.
I think the NCAA hates agents being around college programs more than anything else.
they also had some academic scandals thrown in. I'm actually surprised it wasn't worse.
As far as many are considered, the academic side of things still isn't settled as I think that professor still has his job. Anytime someone uses an anachronistic term in a paper, I think it was, "Mohammedism" in this case, its usually a big clue that it isn't genuine work. E.g.,
And that's a problem, because agents don't represent an unfair competitive advantage nearly as much as boosters paying off the players. Agents only pay you in the hopes that you will sign with them after college. Who you play for doesn't matter. The only way competitive advantage figures into it is if there is a lack of oversight on the part of the coaching staff AND that lack of oversight gives you an advantage in recruiting.
I see the biggest challenge on college football going forward as keeping the playing field level by not letting cheaters get away with cheating. The past year, the NCAA has failed miserably at doing this. And I think that the "cheating gap" between teams like Auburn and Oregon over teams like Michigan and Nebraska is getting wider and wider.
When your assistant coach is basically operating as a agent and you have academic fraud, you have major problems. UNC only got off this light b/c it took aggressive action and cooperated fully.
Unfortunately I think OSU DID get away with slapping themselves on the wrist.
But it was a pretty hard slap and left a bit of a red mark for a minute or two so it's not like they got completely away with it.
I completely forgot about this after the whole ohio thing.
I still think that if coaches are ever going to take the NCAA seriously, these punishments have to get much more severe.
Apparently UNC lacks the capital to buy off the show clause...?
(Looks across the room disapprovingly at Gordon Gee.)
leave it to the UNC football program to break every NCAA rule in the book and still suck. They should have at least like a conference title to vacate. I mean, commit very serious recruiting violations that set your program back over a decade and not even win a conference title. I mean, who does that.....?
Other than an NIT and a B1G Tourney in 98, they didnt win much......
a huge Michigan B-Ball fan, I was just kidding. But are you seriously using an NIT to prove that they won a lot?
...won a Hawaiian Rainbow Classic tournament by beating North Carolina and Kansas (who later joined Michigan in the Final Four that year). I've always considered that to be the most impressive victory of the Fab Five era.
1. Winning NCAA regions in 1992 and 1993 was a big deal. You can't minimize that.
2. The idea that the NCAA sanctions "set the program back a decade" is absurd.
but i win a lot of imaginary arguments with co workers in my shower alone, so i feel like i should contribute my expertise.
if you work at a state office in some way shape or form and are found to break the law in that role, you generally get in big trouble, possibly even jail. if a doctor or engineer is convicted of negligence the state can take action against that person and ask for monetary damages. why can't athletic coaches who work for state universities have the same thing? if you as a coach are found to have broken the rules then you have broken your contract with a state agency and could be punished in accordance with the law and made to pay damages or serve time for fraud or something. besides the show cause for the assistant, the players walk and get paid, the head coach walks and keeps his money, but the clean players stay and get less talented team mates and the fans stay and get worse teams to root for.
Because as soon as you sue your former coach all kinds of nasty secrets get uncovered. Not smart business unless you think everyone at your institution is perfect except for the players and the head coach.
No one in Chapel Hill will care--it isn't basketball.
This is actually completely true, especially with the NCAA tournament happening right now. I'll bet a ton of them won't even be aware of this until the fall.
There are some rabid football fans here and they resent the basketball school moniker. Last summer I argued with an acquaintence who is a UNC booster over penalties (pro tip: don't try this at home) and he seemed to think that Butch Davis would go unpunished. It ended with me saying something about the twenty thousand unfilled seats at Keenan and how coaches don't survive 10.1 violations if it happens on their watch. Not one of my shining moments, but to my credit I'm the one who walked away from the conversation. A few months later he apologized. They had just finished a new expansion (Blue Zone) and all the boosters were quite upset with what they thought would be an institutional de-emphasis on football. I'm not sure Larry Fedora is going to be the answer here, but UNC can always recruit.
To be fair, I'm not an impartial observer (Ohio hater) but the official laundry list that UNC had was much more severe than what Ohio was facing.
Talking about that, anyone knows what the timetable is (if there's even one) with the sanctions for Oregon or Miami?
I don't think either has a Notice of Allegations yet. I would think both would be wrapped up by December, but I'm assuming they'll see an NOA sometime this summer. Oregon seems to be ahead of Miami on the calendar.
If I had to guess, I would assume Oregon gets something similar to OSU/UNC. Who knows with Miami. I suppose they'll see USC like penalties, if not worse.
I'm surprised Chip Kelly kept his job. He basically paid for recruits, though I'm sure the NCAA won't see it that way ($25,000 for "oral" scouting reports?).
I'm not an insider at Oregon or anything, but I really see no way any university could justify keeping him on staff as a coach. He'll be out of the NCAA and either get a pro gig or...? It might be tough having to move to the high school level, but I assume the guy needs some kind of job.
Which is why I was shocked when the Tampa Bay job fell through. Phil Knight must have convinced him he was safe.
Although maybe it fell through on TB's end? Knight might have to okay his firing, but if the NCAA were to hit Kelly with a show-cause, there won't be much Knight can do to keep him around.
Nobody has tried to retain a coach with a show-cause penalty, so there isn't any precedent but I believe the COI has complete discretion in penalizing a school for employing someone with that penalty. They could tell Oregon that they're banned from a bowl each year Kelly continues to coach, and even Knight couldn't save him from that.
already admitted failure to monitor. They're probably still looking at the NCAA calling it lack of institutional control, though. I'd assume the NCAA gets back to them pretty quickly with a timetable and their response to the findings.
Miami, I have no clue other than they better be counting down the days that they're allowed to run a division one athletic program. That entire AD needs to be shut down for at least a few years. I really believe the Miami penalties are going to be the ones the NCAA tries to point to in a "see, we totally punish cheaters" kind of way.
"UNC's punishment is "slightly harsher than Ohio State" because they actually cooperated with the NCAA. The Ohio State method of denial, stonewalling, obstruction, and witness tampering through death threats is the way to go nowadays. Unless they actually have to suffer consequences commensurate with their violations, the Ohio State method is going to become THE working model for schools who want to cheat and grow their programs even while getting caught.
....is that vacating wins for 2008 and 2009 still doesn't erase the memory of losing the Meineke Car Care Bowl in both those years. That might be a terrible punishment in itself for any team.
It seems to me that North Carolina, if nothing else, was far more cooperative and proactive in this investigation than Ohio was during theirs, willing to disassociate itself with the offenders and can people when necessary and justified by the findings. Ohio wanted to try and build The Great Wall to fend off the NCAA. You would hope that, to at least a small extent, they would take into consideration that organizations and even individuals (note the assistant that finally coughed up at least some records) would eventually try to do the the right thing.
However, I dare say UNC's punishment sounds more harsh to me, and perhaps with the academic issues thrown in, that might very well be justified. I won't presume to know how the NCAA weighs such things (for it seems impossible to determine their rationale sometimes), but they do seem to hate these violations in particular.
In any event, I get the sense that UNC, as an institution, might actually be genuinely embarrassed about the mess, which is strangely refreshing.
http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/ncaa/pdfs/ - link the public findings. I do like that UNC has embarked on a complete overhaul of their academic support programs and now require personnel in the athletic department to at least sign ethics statements on an annual basis and disclose any past associations with advisors and runners. That's at least a step towards having an ethics reporting program, if they ever went there with this.
That's crazy
March 12th, 2012 at 10:52 PM ^
end their probations during the '14-'15 season, just in time to start their home and away series in '15 and '17.
I think the punishment UNC received was appropriate, but that the ones handed down to OSU were just so lax that they feel excessive. USC was banned from bowls for a couple of years, lost scholarships, and vacated wins to about the same extent that UNC experienced for a similar enough offense. OSU just got off with the most minimal sanctions possible (IME) for what they did.