NCAA Ruling on the ND Academic Scandal

[phgreek]

I doubt it. I'm not a lawyer, but it would be a tough case to somehow demonstrate that the University suffered "damages."

Maybe so. Seems like if W did not have a value, they wouldn't use it as a punishment...

 

[ab2cmiller]

Sadly I think that this tweet is true. LOL. Even those fans that hate ND see how stupid this is.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The NCAA has made Notre Dame sympathetic.<br><br>That's something.</p>— Ralph D. Russo (@ralphDrussoAP) <a href="https://twitter.com/ralphDrussoAP/status/963571499436249088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 14, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[greyhammer90]

I doubt it. I'm not a lawyer, but it would be a tough case to somehow demonstrate that the University suffered "damages."

Dropping from arguably no.1 winningest to the no. 6 winningest program of all time is fairly damaging to the brand. Regardless, the real discussion would likely be about whether or not the NCAA violated its own guidelines and precedent in deciding to vacate.

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on NCAA rules and regs, and don't know a ton about the actual text of their authority. However, I would hazard a guess that there is some responsibility placed on the NCAA in those rules to not be completely arbitrary in reaching decisions. It appears that ND has a reasonable argument that NCAA either overstepped its stated power or ignored its own prior position statements in reaching this decision.

 

[phgreek]

Dropping from arguably no.1 winningest to the no. 6 winningest program of all time is fairly damaging to the brand. Regardless, the real discussion would likely be about whether or not the NCAA violated its own guidelines and precedent in deciding to vacate.

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on NCAA rules and regs, and don't know a ton about the actual text of their authority. However, I would hazard a guess that there is some responsibility placed on the NCAA in those rules to not be completely arbitrary in reaching decisions. It appears that ND has a reasonable argument that NCAA either overstepped its stated power or ignored its own prior position statements in reaching this decision.

The actual law(s) that apply here ... ie that apply to restrain the NCAAs conduct...beyond me. Just going off expectations from other dealings, this view seems to make sense to me.

 

[irishtrain]

Just do what Alabama does with their ump teen National Championships ignore reality and count those wins from 2012/2013.

 

[Irish#1]

I think it's time that Jenkins step down as President. This isn't the first time he's been in error or said something that came back later to bite us in the butt. From the start he said he would accept any loss of wins...bad move. You play meek to the NCAA, they take that as a sign and they take the hammer to you. It's ridiculous what institutions like North Carolina and Miami have gotten away with in recent years. Hell, the fact the NCAA basically reneged on their punishment of Penn State...that was really low. If ever there was a time to remove wins, that should have been a clear case that was never backed out of. In essence the NCAA is saying that it's cool if you abuse some kids and lie about it, but a few players get punished for getting help on some papers...and you self report it? Nope, clean the record books, that's some dirty stuff. Makes you wonder what kind of backroom deals occurred for those programs to get away Scott-free. We already know the University when it comes to money, no way would they participate in anything like that.

Between his goofs in the past, and Jenkins advocating that ND move to a more "academic" league away from the football factories...I just don't think he understands Notre Dame. He certainly gets the secular side and the academic side, but he can't and won't protect the athletes nor will he fight for them. Lets be honest, academics aside, Notre Dame built their popularity and name based on the football team first. Regardless of what may have happened to the landscape of college football in the last 25 years, football has been their identity and without it they would be the Boston College of the Midwest. If Jenkins thinks Notre Dame would still be Notre Dame without that legacy, he's sorely mistaken. Refusing to fight the NCAA on this and advocating for a demotion to an "academic" league is not going to bring more prosperity to the University.



I found this surprising. For years Dodd would do nothing but stoke the fires and tear down Notre Dame. This piece was oddly supportive.

Sadly, we are no longer the "Fighting Irish".

 

[Irish#1]

I doubt it. I'm not a lawyer, but it would be a tough case to somehow demonstrate that the University suffered "damages."

Dropping from arguably no.1 winningest to the no. 6 winningest program of all time is fairly damaging to the brand. Regardless, the real discussion would likely be about whether or not the NCAA violated its own guidelines and precedent in deciding to vacate.

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on NCAA rules and regs, and don't know a ton about the actual text of their authority. However, I would hazard a guess that there is some responsibility placed on the NCAA in those rules to not be completely arbitrary in reaching decisions. It appears that ND has a reasonable argument that NCAA either overstepped its stated power or ignored its own prior position statements in reaching this decision.

Agree with Grey. I think there's grounds and it could center around the way NCAA arbitrarily metes out punishment as Grey stated.

On a positive note, we never lost to Bama in the NCG. If we didn't play in that game, then they can't claim another championship!

 

[T Town Tommy]

https://www.southbendtribune.com/sp...cle_9cc003f6-2499-11e4-81d5-0017a43b2370.html

“At the end of the summer session, suspicions arose on the part of a member of our academic staff that students had submitted papers and homework that was written for them by others,” Jenkins said. “This was referred to the compliance office on athletics on July 29. The office of general counsel than initiated an investigation, and that investigation is ongoing.


“The university has decided that if the investigation determines that the student-athletes would have been ineligible for past competitions, Notre Dame will voluntarily vacate any victories in which they participated in.”

Rule #1:

Never say anything or offer up to do anything punitive until the facts come in.

The NCAA overstepped their boundaries IMO - as they usually do - but Jenkins put the school in a horrible position with his comments shortly after the story broke. He failed to control the narrative and it cost the school in the end.

 

[Legacy]

Notre Dame acted as if the NCAA would find according to precedent, in fairness, taking into account that member institutions in 2016 affirmed academic autonomy, and not in a capricious and arbitrary manner with a punishment comparative to full institutional involvement in academic fraud.

Accepting any penalties above and beyond what ND self-imposes is consistent with that type of thinking. No one else acts like that in college football with those type of misconceptions of the NCAA.

 

[IrishLax]

https://www.southbendtribune.com/sp...cle_9cc003f6-2499-11e4-81d5-0017a43b2370.html


Rule #1:

Never say anything or offer up to do anything punitive until the facts come in.

The NCAA overstepped their boundaries IMO - as they usually do - but Jenkins put the school in a horrible position with his comments shortly after the story broke. He failed to control the narrative and it cost the school in the end.

YUP!

I wrote an article for an ND website the moment this shit was a breaking story basically saying exactly this. We are the only university that doesn’t understand how the game is played and how to correctly approach situations.

 

[IrishTusker]

Should schools count victories if players who played in those games were ineligible? People are blaming Jenkins for not behaving dishonestly like UNC’s administrators did. Is ND now supposed to behave like UNC? The fact that other schools get away with it is not an argument that it is okay or shouldn’t be punished. ND knows what it is dealing with: other schools that would never self-report, or admit wrongdoing, or declare players ineligible. Given this reality, ND should either leave the NCAA, try to clean up the NCAA, behave unethically like those other schools, or accept being at a disadvantage relative to other schools. The last option is probably the best one.

 

[IrishLax]

Should schools count victories if players who played in those games were ineligible? People are blaming Jenkins for not behaving dishonestly like UNC’s administrators did. Is ND now supposed to behave like UNC? The fact that other schools get away with it is not an argument that it is okay or shouldn’t be punished. ND knows what it is dealing with: other schools that would never self-report, or admit wrongdoing, or declare players ineligible. Given this reality, ND should either leave the NCAA, try to clean up the NCAA, behave unethically like those other schools, or accept being at a disadvantage relative to other schools. The last option is probably the best one.

EDIT: I made a long rambling post full of typos so I'm going to try again.

ND adhering to the honor code and punishing cheaters is correct, responsible, and fair. I'm guessing most everyone agrees with that.

Where ND started following bad policy is when they decided to launch a massive forensic investigation into thousands of documents and years of assignments instead of just punishing people for what they were caught cheating on. ND could've punished the players for having cheated on an assignment and moved on and it would've been the end.

Now, at the point that they do this investigation, everything is still basically fine. Where they lose the "responsible" aspect is when they start looking at people who have already graduated and start punitively looking at how to lower GPAs. From an academic standpoint, they had a responsibility to adjudicate cheating before conferring degrees. From an athletic standpoint, they had a responsibility to everyone who WASN'T cheating to make sure players were eligible at the time of competition. Any policy that allows for retroactive invalidation of eligibility is inherently bad and irresponsible. Such policies should flat out not exist in academia with exception of Ph.D. and Masters programs where someone may have plagiarized a thesis. There are statutes of limitations on laws for a reason.

Where it gets "unfair" is when they went back to classes... some for professors that aren't even here anymore and students were long gone... and tried to play time cop. The professors at the time had a responsibility to catch cheating at the time it happened, and in the spirit of fairness to any accused students the administration to adjudicate everything before conferring a degree and letting the graduate move on with their life. Once you miss the boat on the fair time frame for your procedures/policies, it gets very sticky.

From an NCAA standpoint, even given the fact that the process was no long "fair" or "responsible" it would've still been fine and arrived at the "correct" outcome had the administration simply dealt with the NCAA differently. Every other school on earth knows the process when you suspect an infraction is 1) suspend 2) do not present anything to the NCAA until you have your ducks in a row. If Jenkins had simply suspended the "Frozen Five" pending investigation and then presented the NCAA with findings that said "in our opinion, no players were ineligible at the time of competition and no infractions were committed because all cheating was between students with no athletics or academics representatives involved" then we would still have likely have had no consequences whatsoever. Moreover, they simply could have not reported it to the NCAA at all given their internal conclusions and the NCAA would have never investigated. Where they handled it "incorrectly" was in voluntarily asserting that we would vacate wins before having any findings AND retroactively changing grades in a kangaroo court process AND then giving the NCAA ammunition in a way that we didn't have to that would lead them to a conclusion we didn't want or agree with.

ND decided to approach this in a top-down manner where they started by trying to employ policies that didn't fit the situation (or make up new policies on the fly) to ensure compliance. They should have approached it in a bottom-up fashion focused on the outcome... the desired outcome should have been "ensure academic integrity while minimizing NCAA involvement." This was common fucking sense to anyone not in ND's ivory tower where apparently everyone is naive on how the NCAA functions.

Something like 90% of college students admit to cheating on assignments. Notre Dame is the only school that thinks it's appropriate to years after graduation go back and try to audit people's papers and cause massive issues for innocent parties because of their own ineptitude in dealing with problems at the time they occurred.

 

[ACamp1900]

This whole fucking thread:

 

[Grahambo]

This is far out of my league but insert angry opinion here.

I love ND...and IE.

 

[Graybeard52]

Don't know how to embed video here but here's the Golics going off on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_0eBNDEqwQ

 

[Rudy89]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Pinstripe_Bowl
I thought that when a win was vacated it just meant an asterisk by the win. According to this Rutgers won the Bowl game in 2013. I thought I remember hearing that when USC vacated wins the win was just taken off their record but the teams that they beat weren’t retroactively declared winners. Someone want to shed some light on this?

 

[ulukinatme]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Pinstripe_Bowl
I thought that when a win was vacated it just meant an asterisk by the win. According to this Rutgers won the Bowl game in 2013. I thought I remember hearing that when USC vacated wins the win was just taken off their record but the teams that they beat weren’t retroactively declared winners. Someone want to shed some light on this?

Trolls. Some of it has been cleaned up, but this is still there "Notre Dame have vacated this victory due to being no good cheaters. The reign of Kyle Flood is now vindicated."

lulz. Must really suck being a Scarlet Knight fan.

 

[Irish#1]

Need to figure out a way to turn up the heat on the NCAA.

 

[ThePiombino]

Need to figure out a way to turn up the heat on the NCAA.

Back channel convo that goes something like this:

ND: Fix this or we're out.

NCAA: Fack.​

 

[ab2cmiller]

I now believe that the reason we didn't win our appeal is because Louisville was making similar arguments in their appeal about how the penalties exceed past precedent etc. Unfortunately, I think we were the fall guy.

 

[ulukinatme]

How nice that the NCAA finally decided to find their balls after everyone before us managed to neuter them despite far worse accusations.

 

[IrishLax]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">“I never will forget that when we called — literally, the day after we discovered we had at that point one incidence of academic misconduct — the first thing the NCAA said on the conference call when we told them was, ‘Is that all?' "<a href="https://t.co/bkMjvZDAY4">https://t.co/bkMjvZDAY4</a></p>— Eric Hansen (@EHansenNDI) <a href="https://twitter.com/EHansenNDI/status/1060347921353396225?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 8, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Q: Given everything that happened, would you take the same course of action, giving kids their due process, which is what eventually led to the vacated games penalty?

Swarbrick: “It’s hard to answer that hypothetical. We were really disappointed, given our level of forthrightness and engagement with the way the process played out.

“I never will forget that when we called — literally, the day after we discovered we had at that point one incidence of academic misconduct — the first thing the NCAA said on the conference call when we told them was, ‘Is that all?’

“There’s a little bit of irony looking from the first call to the end, but it’s over, it’s done. We disagreed, but we’re moving on.”

You naive fools. The NCAA is not an honorable institution, and the only thing you should ever say to them is "fuck you." Every other school (Miami, UNC, Auburn, etc.) knows this.

 

[ThePiombino]

Beyond frustrating

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">“I never will forget that when we called — literally, the day after we discovered we had at that point one incidence of academic misconduct — the first thing the NCAA said on the conference call when we told them was, ‘Is that all?' "<a href="https://t.co/bkMjvZDAY4">https://t.co/bkMjvZDAY4</a></p>— Eric Hansen (@EHansenNDI) <a href="https://twitter.com/EHansenNDI/status/1060347921353396225?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 8, 2018</a></blockquote>
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You naive fools. The NCAA is not an honorable institution, and the only thing you should ever say to them is "fuck you." Every other school (Miami, UNC, Auburn, etc.) knows this.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk

 

[zelezo vlk]

The NCAA, like the Windsor royal family, are illegitimate. Therefore this ruling does not apply

 

[dad4aa]

Are we still trying to reverse this or is it completely done and nothing will bring those wins back?

 

[IrishLax]

Are we still trying to reverse this or is it completely done and nothing will bring those wins back?

We won't get those wins back until the NCAA is dissolved in like year 2030.

 

[Sherm Sticky]

You naive fools. The NCAA is not an honorable institution, and the only thing you should ever say to them is "fuck you." Every other school (Miami, UNC, Auburn, etc.) knows this.

Nailed it!

If Penn State got back their wins during the most hideous scandal in college football history, then the NCAA should do the same for Notre Dame.

 

[GowerND11]

"Is that it?" hahahahahahaha....

This was so far off their radar. I'm surprised after saying that they ever even investigated.

 

[ACamp1900]

Is that all?? yet they scorched earth ND over it....

 

[Bishop2b5]

A decade ago Bama self-reported that several athletes, including 7 football players, had been getting extra text books at the school book store and lending them to friends. We asked the NCAA how many games they'd recommend we suspend the players for in order to settle the issue and they said 2. Saban sat them for 4. They then vacated every win those players had participated in. They screwed us and ND over self-reported trivial stuff and let others get away with murder if they deny, fight and lawyer up.