"I got out in time!!"Here's what it looks like will happen:
-All the wins from the '04 & possibly the '05 seasons will be expunged from the books
This type of punishment always seems silly to me...the revenue from tickets is still theirs, the fans still think those games count...so no big deal here, to me.
-20 scholarships lost for the USC football team
This is a big penalty. Even with USC's typically-talented roster, depth is still needed and with early defections, it's always good to be able to allow a player a year before he starts. Plus, most 19 year olds, even the highest-touted, aren't as big and strong as the average 22 year old college football player.
-No post-season play for two seasons
Another significant punishment as this hurts exposure and if nothing else will affect the psyche of the fanbase during the holiday season.
-Possible removal of Bush's HeismanThis is a somewhat-large deal simply because it's unprecedented (I believe)...but a few sources don't think this will happen.
I still can't find if there's any ramifications for the basketball team, but I think they should also be punished...as should USC's athletic director be fired and forced to never hold such a post in the NCAA due to his lack of control of the situation...but that probably won't happen.
It might be interesting to see if USC seeks to hold Carroll, Bush, Floyd, Mayo and others accountable after the punishment is official.
The NCAA took way too long to complete the investigation and then hand down the punishment. But, if the above is what comes to fruition, the NCAA got it right...for once.
What I'd still like to see is the coaches being held more-accountable for such violations. For instance- if your team is guilty of multiple-major infractions that leave a program decimated, you not only can't coach for 5 years, but will also be fined if you decide to return to NCAA coaching after the punitive period (as a deterrent). Sure, it won't happen, but one can dream.
2 comments:
The these-wins-don't-count punishment is mostly silly, but it does come in handy in certain cases, like when Bobby Bowden thinks he's closing in on Joe Paterno and suddenly he's not. Plus it means you can tell fans of that team "sorry, that never happened" and actually have a basis for saying so.
The scholarship losses are doubly important with the APR system now in place (see mgoblog's post about their APR), because with fewer scholarships, every transfer and non-qualifier hurts USC that much more over the four-year period including those numbers.
I think the NCAA is (very slowly) moving toward a standard where penalties actually follow the coach from place to place. (Why they didn't do this starting in, say, 1950, I have no idea.) That was one of the reasons they were supposedly looking closely at practice logs from Rodriguez' days at West Virginia, to see if it was a pattern relating to the coach or not. (Of course WV hadn't been penalized and probably wouldn't have been at that point anyway, so it was a silly example in the first place. A better example would be the show-cause order on Sampson: effectively, five years coaching outside the NCAA.)
Unfortunately, the Pac-10 shares bowl revenue equally between the schools, so USC will only feel one-tenth of the impact of that punishment, assuming it takes effect now and expires before Colorado becomes a member. (It would be funny if USC were banned from television for two years, but that's not going to happen.)
It was obvious severe sanctions were on the way when Carroll bolted for the NFL after having said for years he was having too much fun in college. The way that the NCAA punishes schools for bad behavior is completely backwards. Are any of the people involved in the mess being punished (besides being forced to take multimillion dollar salaries from NFL franchises)? No. The people being punished had nothing to do with the incidents. Well, maybe there are some currently on roster that have received "benefits", but let's focus on the majority.
What are the rules on allowing student athletes to transfer after sanctions are imposed? Can USC football players defect now without having to wait a year? I hope so.
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