NCAA Infractions Committee Report on USC - Ghosts of infractions past haunt SC
 

Dan Wetzel on his Twitter said the report is due this week. Another tweet (took from another forum but the author was not included) said the NCAA is going to say Bush received improper benefits.

One person predicting severe penalties for the Bush affair is Chris Dufresne of the Los Angeles Times. On his Twitter account, he made a prediction of five years probation, a bowl ban and a loss of 21 scholarships.

Should be interesting.

Until they figure out a way that the "punishment" follows the offending players and/or coaches (which I readily admit I have no suggestion...), then these decisions ring hollow to me.

The reports I have seen from insiders is that this was set to be released some time ago, but USC has been trying to lessen sanctions by threatening legal action. No confirmation on that, though.

I wonder if the McKnight stuff has been worked in? And if the basketball program will see any further punishment? Or if the NCAA has backed off of a potential lack of institutional control charge?

21 scholies is an oddly specific number. Most guesses would probably be a divisibile of 5 or 10 (5 scholies, 10 scholies, 20 scholies, etc.). 21 isn't a natural number to be a "guess", which makes me wonder if Dufresne actually knows something there after all.

I would like to see both. The institution gets hit, and the coaches get hit. I doubt there's much that can be done to the players, except maybe strip them of rewards or ban them from NCAA events or something like that.

I searched for the LA Times Writer and in his Twitter he said he predicted 21 schollies because it is what Alabama got in 2002.

Ah well, so much for that. He probably doesn't have any inside information on specific numbers than.

Well I think it's impossible to punish the players. Coaches would seem much easier than they are making it out to be. Why can't they do what they did to Sampson? You get a 5-year ban from coaching the sport.

The school should be punished when they should have known what was going on. If it's a clean program that has a one time incident with two people who are not high up on the chain, than I see giving the school a pass. But there is no way that USC didn't know what was going on. The same goes for all these other schools that deal with shady characters. You are responsible for the actions of your employees.

The one thing I hate is when schools get postseason bans after the players and coaches have left. You just screw the new batch of players and a coach who had nothing to do with anything. I would rather see them state that the postseason/bowl ban takes place in 4-5 years when all the new players have played out their scholarship. That way new recruits know in advance that they won't have an opportunity to play in a bowl/postseason during those years before they commit.

Question about coaches and contracts. Lets say you are a coach and you get a big bonus if you bring a team to the Final Four. Then say 6 years later they vacate your wins. Do you have to pay back the school that bonus?

Chris Dufresne is a huge SC hater - no surprise that he is predicting/hoping for the worst.

Seems to be the equivalent of one "class" given that you can have 85 scholarships out a time right?

Doesn't that effectively become a death penalty though? Who would go play there during that period or for years afterwards?

At a place like USC, I think the detriment to recruiting wouldn't be too great (outside of the loss of scholarships). You'll still be playing on national TV at a high profile school where scouts will be watching your every move. There's not too many Vernon Gholston's out there whose NFL stock skyrockets based on a bowl game.

Am I the only one who sees the irony that an organization that ostensibly is there to promote student athletes uses loss of scholarships as a penalty? I mean, it's not like any jocks have to worry, they'll slide to other schools. Who will suffer is the higher academic candidates with more marginal physical skills who would have never attended the school on probation anyway and now may not attend college at all. Way to go NCAA. It's all about the student athletes? RIGHT.

As previously mentioned, they do have some penalties that follow coaches already. With that said, I think they need to be harder on the schools to reinforce that they need to be much more vigilant about what is going on in their program.

I think it beats having some unsuspecting kids lose their opportunity based on a past regime. If it costs a school in recruiting, then perhaps they should run a cleaner program.

Not an expert by any means, but it seems the groundwork is there for an unjust enrichment claim (i.e. coach ended up getting an unexpected windfall).

You know, DeTox, this report really had better come out this week, or I will be pissed. I kept expecting the Big Ten meeting on expansion to happen "tomorrow" for weeks on end.

Well I guess I know one person I will be leaving behind when Zombie Joepa attacks.

I will be pretty hard to leave behind considering I will likely be sitting in your driveway for like 5 weeks before the Zombie Joepa attacks.

Your thread will be all like: "ZOMBIE JOEPA: ATTCKS TOMORROW!" and the fucker wont even have died yet.

Well played. Well I'm across from the Library. I'll have the barbed wire out front.

It's ok, DeTox. Don't worry. You're still my College Football Insider. I know your info is good. I blame Pumpy for all these delays.

Cant think of one writer in LA who has it out for USC, so this is rather surprising

Ok, just me then? I wonder if part of it is because my college didn't have any sports teams so that I approach this issue more neutrally since my school can't benefit/be hurt in the argument. I know it's hard to find a truly meaningful penalty for cheating but losing scholarships should not be in the picture.

That wouldn't surprise me. Oklahoma, Alabama, and others have had issues just as serious in the recent past as what USC is accused of and they were not hit with bowl bans. Heck, Alabama just won a National Title while on probation. If the NCAA tries to levy a bowl ban against USC, I'd expect a strong legal response set on the precedent that the NCAA has set.

The fact that USC would want to sue the NCAA would be awesome as it would be the pinnacle of their arrogance. I'm also not sure the grounds in which they would sue though because I'm pretty sure their is a grievance policy that USC would have to follow and knowing Special Ed, Lame, and McNair being on the staff, it would be the fastest way to end up WITH the death penalty, which I'm perfectly fine with as well.

According to Wetzel, the report isn't going to come this week due to how lengthy the report is. Whatever that means

Sorry. Kinkos ran out of paper.

Environmentally sensitive!

LMAO... this organization, seriously, is run by fools. Or liars. Or both. It's sad that, despite that, they wield the hand of fate over whole programs like they do here with USC or have with others in the past.

I'm not saying, as a UCLA fan, that I don't want USC to get hit; of course, I do. But the NCAA is a travesty.

I don't know why it's arrogant to imagine that the NCAA in her infinite wisdom, taking 5 years to render a decision, very likely will screw it up.


Not sure how anybody can defend the current rule set assembled by these academic bureaucrats. It makes no distinction between outright cheating and failure to catch someone cheating.


What preposterous nonsense!


I do think fighting the outcome in the courts is a tough slog considering that the courts have heretofore given the NCAA so much deference despite the fact they are doubtless the largest offenders of Sherman Anittrust laws in the country.


It's pretty unlikely you'll ever see the death penalty again in CFB, although I wouldn't put it beyond the reach of these imbeciles to impose it again.


One can only hope that someday soon they'll realize (or be forced to realize) that the problem isn't the kids or the programs.


That was the problem 30 years ago.


Punishing them has the same effect as Nancy Reagan's "Just say No to Drugs" policy. Putting the drug abusers behind bars whilst the dealers roamed around free.


Do you think Lloyd Lake or Michael Michaels cared about what would happen to USC if they tampered with Reggie and his family? Don't be ridiculous! These aren't boosters. These are predatory agents trying to lead the athletes away from college athletics.


Punishing USC? Talk about leaning the ladder against the wrong wall!


The problem today is the NCAA's shameful exploitation of the collegiate athlete and the unwillingness of the NFL and the NBA along with their player unions to take a stand against predatory agents.


USC will likely go after the predatory agents first (Lake, Michaels and Ornstein) for violating California law and tampering with a collegiate athlete.


Once they've established that in fact, they themselves were victims, not perpetrators under the law, they will challenge the NCAA ruling, using the legal result with the law breaking predatory agents as air cover to prove that the NCAA got it all wrong.

The best way to punish the coaches is for the sanctions to follow them wherever they go. So whoever hires them will have to suffer the same loss of scholarships/bowl bans/etc as the team he left.

But this isn't like a couple agents tracked down a player in a dark alley and handed him a suitcase full of money. These guys were welcome in the locker room and on the sidelines at games. They were a part of the team and there is no way USC was naive enough to think something wasnt' happening.

I feel bad for a school when an alum lets a kid drive his Mercedes around. I don't feel bad when the school turned a blind eye to all this stuff. They created the culture and allowed it to happen.

I don't think you can ban another school from bowl games and such just because they hired a dirty coach. But I don't see why you can't ban these guys from coaching for 5 years.

Yes, Oklahoma got hit with scholarships, probation, and no bowl ban. I also don't think USC will get a bowl ban. But, I do think Oklahoma may have pretty darn close. We lost our wins (we got them back on appeal, but the appeals process was changed so it's much harder to get them back now--essentially we would have lost that appeal now).

But I think the thing that saved us was the response to the problem. We got much tougher on compliance right after we found out. We let the NCAA know about the potential problem, investigated it, and then kicked the starting QB off the team without waiting for a ruling from the NCAA. I think that swift action helped OU. It's really hard to say what USC has done because there's no open records law that applies to USC as a private school. So everything is up for speculation on how things have been handled internally and with the NCAA. But, from an outsiders perspective, it seems like USC hasn't done much to get out in front of the problem...not just with Bush, because that came out after he was gone, but with the compliance program in general. It seemed that USC thumbed its nose more than fixing what was a potential problem. But if that is the case, it wouldn't surprise me if USC got a bowl ban and OU didn't--also, because of no open records, it's hard to know what else may have been uncovered.

Why all of this preoccupation with the punishment all the time? Why not get preoccupied with the constructive steps required to put an end to an issue that involves less than 1% of collegiate athletes?

It's not a staggering problem. USC had one scholarship athlete the entire decade who apparently decided to shirk the rules. I hardly think that justifies branding the word "cheater" on Pete Carroll's forehead as he moves between jobs.

Wow, you really think it was just one athlete? Time for cactusdave to do a Google search.

:lol:

That's great and all but I guess Carroll shouldnt have allowed them in the locker room, otherwise you might have a valid complaint

As far as SC knew these guys were friends of the Bush family from the time he was a little kid. Do you think they were signing a deed to a house in front of SC officials? Hindsight is 20/20 when it comes to stuff like this.


How do you think this thing went down? If SC was aware of it and "turned a blind eye" as you suggest then they were complicit cheaters themselves. Otherwise we're talking negligence which is certainly possible, particularly considering the way the NCAA has constructed their LOIC rules.


But there is a distinction to be made between complicit participation with the cheating and negligence in oversight and clearly the former is far more serious in terms of an infraction. So which is it?


They created a culture how? By opening up their practice sessions to the public?


The public is allowed to tour Heritage Hall as well. Is it any less likely to imagine a player/family/agent rendezvous may have taken place there?


How exactly does one go about identifying these predatory agent types based upon appearances?


Let's consider 85 scholarship athletes plus their family and their friends all having the capability of placing a program's behind in a sling, all congregating in one place from time to time to watch a ballgame or a practice session if you like. What kind of a surveillance network is required to manage that?


I didn't write these stupid unenforceable rules. These genuises don't bother to think through these problems. The very same people who brought us "excessive celebration" and now the "no messages under the eyes" rule.

Has Yahoo alleged anything else? Are you talking about Mayo? I thought we were talking about the football program?


Okay so let's include Mayo. Good Lord! These two kids aren't axe murderers you know. Maybe they took a little money prematurely. Even that can't be conclusively proven. It'd be nice if the public could be relied upon to maintain some perspective here.


Nevermind that half of the Florida and Oregon football teams are in jail, because god forbid, OJ Mayo received a flat screen television while he was enrolled at USC.

What would have given him cause to prevent it?

Good Lord, some people will apparently defend pretty much anything.

But on the bright side, you managed to double your lifetime post count (under this username) in just a matter of hours.

The preoccupations comes with my frustration at seeing punishments carried out that end up hurting people that were not involved in the scandals (i.e. other players on the team), while the coaches can freely move about without penalty.

Much of it stems from being a Canes fan and seeing the penalties almost destroy the program in the mid-90s whilst Dennis Erickson was able to come back and coach at other schools without problem.

To UCLA fans, anyone that plays for USC is a axe murderer...

That's interesting. Hadn't heard that before.





I thought OU responded after the allegations were communicated to the public by someone who worked in the office at the Big Red car dealership who was unfriendly to the Sooner program.


Not deliberately trying to cast dispersions on your version, but one of these days someone is going to have to explain to me what constitutes "self reporting" to the NCAA.


As far as kicking Bomar out, I'm pretty sure there wasn't anything else left to do. I mean the guy was dead to rights guilty, and it was as plain as day! What else was Stoops going to do?




What knowledge do you have that suggests that the compliance office has fallen down on the job? I think they were at least as timely responding to McKnight as was OU with Bomar.





You could be right. But the NCAA has said repeatedly during the 5 year episode that USC cooperated fully with them, providing access to officials in the athletic department, compliance office as well as the entire coaching staff. I think the media (especially Yahoo) has persisted with this theme that the program has stonewalled the process when USC has simply said, "Whether you think it's right or not, we don't know what took place with Reggie and those people. We weren't involved on any level and it took us by complete surprise".

I'm torn on this. On the one hand, I'd like to see USC get hit pretty hard given the severity of the punishments levied on Washington back in '93, and to instill a little humility on a program that needs some.

On the other hand, I don't think what happened at USC was as blatantly bad as what happened at Alabama leading to the 2002 sanctions, so I'd rather not see a Pac-10/West Coast team get hit harder than other recent offenders either.

Fair enough but the coaches aren't necessarily at the heart of the problem in the majority of cases. Just because I coach a football program doesn't mean that I'm operating a large scale surveillance network tracking the behavior of every scholarship athlete in the program.


If that's the job description you don't need a football coach. You need Columbo or Jim Rockford.


As coach I can implement the NCAA's recommended best practices approach which includes reasonable oversight.


if that's not enough and you're telling me that you're going to label me a cheater and make it impossible for me to work at my profession whenever some greedy kid steps out of line, then you're going to find out very soon that nobody wants that job.

cactusdave-

I don't know what's going on at USC. I'm not near the situation, so I'm kind of going by a lack of response from USC. That's not fair really, but you hear more about this kind of thing with public schools who are subject to open records. I'm willing to wait to find out from the NCAA what they are saying, I was just giving an off-the-cuff impression I have of the situation which isn't based in fact.

The change in the rules on appealing wins was changed afterward from a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard to one that is essentially beyond a shadow of a doubt. I heard this from OU's Director of Compliance at a public meeting (i.e., I didn't just pick up on this in conversation).

As to what happened at Big Red, it is my understanding that a person informed both the conference (maybe the NCAA) and OU at the same time about the situation without telling OU that it had been reported. Then OU told the NCAA they were going to investigate. I could be mixing this situation up with another, but I am pretty sure that is what happened.

The same reason you don't let someone smoke in a grain silo.

Shit tends to blow up in your face when you do.

333, appreciate the perspective and truly I'm spit balling here as well as this thing has been managed since day one like a military secret.


That's an interesting shift on the part of the NCAA from preponderance to beyond a shadow of a doubt.


I think the issue from an outsiders perspective re: OU, Big Red and Bomar is that the abandonment of wins even on appeal should have been cut and dry.


If the NCAA rule is that a player becomes ineligible when he accepts gifts or money deemed inappropriate by the NCAA, then from that moment forward any wins in which he was a participant should be abandoned.


There is no question that I'm aware of as to whether or not Bomar played in games for at least one season during the same period that he was falsifying timesheets.


Therefore on appeal or not, how does this simple interpretation of eligibility versus non eligibility get reversed?