FSU Officials In Indy Attempting To Overturn Vacating Of Wins Penalty Which Could Affect Bowden's Plans For 2010
by FrankDNole on Nov 15, 2009 2:19 PM EST
in FSU Football
40 comments
This was unacceptable to Wetherell, because that could cost good friend and Coach Bobby Bowden, who is presently No. 2 and falling further behind Penn State's Joe Paterno with every loss, in the all-time victories race, an estimated four victories from 2006, and an estimated seven victories from 2007. This would all but eliminate any chance of Bowden ever overtaking Paterno for the all-time wins record.
In addition, what many seem to forget is that also at stake is the 2007 men's outdoor track and field national championship.
"We figured we'd argue about (losing) scholarships. We figured we'd argue about the time of the probation. And that was fair game. And that's where everybody was supposed to go. Nobody ever laid out any of that other stuff (vacating wins).
"It's real simple. The thing's not that confusing. We would never have asked the kids to give up their rights, the same rights that other students who took that class had, if we knew (the Committee on Infractions) would go in that direction."
"What you're telling a university (is that) when somebody commits a violation, whatever that violation is, they're guilty at that point," Wetherell said. "You may not find out about it until after the season, when grades come out or somebody tells or the court does something. …"You can't put that toothpaste back in the tube. You do what we did. You try to fix it and move on."
"What I hope to accomplish is demonstrate what I've said in writing, that the evidence does not support the finding of academic fraud."
HUH?
A) If FSU should win and gets the vacating of wins decision reversed, the IAC could remand back to the COI, which have been quoted as saying the scholarship reductions would have been "more stringent" were it not for the vacating-of-wins penalty. Additional scholarship losses could very well be devastating to our football program. If FSU were to lose more scholarships, this would probably force FSU to appeal again.
2) If FSU should lose, there could be lawsuits. Wetherell has rattled off potential issues, including that athletes gave up their due-process rights by agreeing to a deal that was portrayed to them as a one-shot solution.
This whole fiasco has now turned into a never ending saga and a vicious circle.
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"In a questionable move"
“Rumored to embarass and oust Dave”…exactly what is meant by this? Is the rumor that the only reason TK self-reported etc is to get rid of Dave? I realize that DH wasn’t going to roll over for TK, but is the rumor that we blew this thing up against DH’s wishes in order to kick him to the curb?
Not trying to flame here, I wish we’d have kept Dave, the whole spanking spurrier is one of my all time favorite moments…
That is exactly why I said rumored. Here is what I remember, but I know there are other TN members out there who know more than I do about this conspiracy.
Dave Hart was rumored to have lead the charge with the boosters to get rid of Jeff Bowden in November, 2006. Bobby was livid with Dave Hart for his role in this conspiracy and was quoted at the time as saying, “It’s just amazing, When things go wrong the first thing they blame is the offensive coordinator. That’s kind of the game we Americans play.”
At the end of March, 2007, Hart found out about the cheating scandal and informed TK a couple of days later in the beginning of April. It is believed that TK immediately informed Bobby of the ever growing scandal and here is where it is rumored they conspired to use Dave Hart as the scape goat, and to get rid of him as revenge for his role leading up to Jeff’s $537,000 buyout.
On May 28, 2007, less than 2 months after being informed by Hart of the scandal, TK sent Hart a 2 paragraph letter informing him his contract would not be renewed when it expired in 2009 with no reason given for the non-renewal. But this was not good enough for Bowden and TK, so they kept the pressure on Hart until he finally had enough of the BS, and in October of 2007, Hart told them to F*ck off and accepted a $475,000 buyout, plus a annuity, to leave on Dec. 31, 2007.
IMO, Dave Hart was one of the best athletic directors FSU has ever had and was responsible for much of the success our other teams are having today, especially the woman’s sports. In his 12 years as FSU’s AD, the AD budget and revenues more than doubled, he was the president of 2 different national AD associations, and ironically he was also named Athletics Director of the Year in the Southeast Region in 2000 and 2005.
That is the alleged rumors and the “questionable move” I was referring to.
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Any chance he would come back with a new regime in place
With TK leaving, and Bobby gone, that is both ends of the program. With Jimbo, and hopefully a competent President, bringing back Hart would be awesome.
I don't believe there is a chance in hell of that ever happening.
Hart is currently the ADIW (In Waiting) at Alabama. He and his wife are Alabama grads, he played basketball at Bama, and I believe he is from Alabama and his all his family lives there(?).
I wish there was a chance, but I can’t see it happening.
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BTW, Hart was also one of the key players in the very lucrative (at the time) television deal for the entire ACC conference and was also a key player in the ACC expansion with UM and VT in 2003(?).
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Hart was extremly respected in the AD community
I heard rumors that when TK was searching for new AD’s he was shunned by most in the community for the way he treated Hart. Some of the best in the business wouldn’t give him the time of day thus resulting in Spetman.
Tomahawk Nation: Top 10 NCAA Football Blog
I disagree completely with T.K.
The rule that athletes are ineligible from the moment the cheating occurred is the way you have to rule this. I don’t care when it’s discovered. It may be unfair to the players who didn’t cheat, the poor coaches—whoever, but that’s the rule; and it’s the right one.
“You can’t put that toothpaste back in the tube. You do what we did. You try to fix it and move on.” This is correct, T.K., but if you played games with ineligible athletes, those games are subject to forfeit. It doesn’t matter if you knew about it. They cheated and they cost the team the mythical victories. Instead of fighting this rule and blaming the system, (which you are responsible for, by the way) how about preaching some accountability? Re-structure the system and send the message that individual athletes are part of teams, and each part of the team is able to bring about consequences that affect the team through their actions. It’s the same thing coaches tell kids from little league sports—if one teammate makes a mistake, the whole team pays for it. That’s what being a part of a team means.
Don’t even get me started on the Bowden stuff. This is just another example of the FSU administration CARING TOO MUCH ABOUT THE PAST AT THE EXPENSE OF THE FUTURE. Do as you say you want to, Mr. President. Move on.
>>---l>
The problem to me is they over turned the Oklahoma case. Oklahoma played with with ineligible players and was allowed to keep their wins. Yes, the Oklahoma case did not involve as many atheletes, but they were still ineligible.
What if Tebow was found to be playing ineligible and no one else? It’s only one player. If you use the Oklahoma case as the example, then UF would retain all their wins.
Now what if instead their entire practice squad was found ineligible? That’s more players. So, they should not keep the wins? Yet the one guy, Tebow, probably had more of an influence on the wins.
Trying to figure out the impact the ineligible players had is a trick road to go down.
Guilty (and inelligible) upon being accused doesn't make much sense.
The COI hasn’t applied their rules that way before because it makes little sense. The stripping of wins is designed to punish Bowden. It can’t take the bowl games away and give another school the opportunity to go0 back in time and play instead of FSU. Same thing with the track championship. Even if you were to pass the title to the No. 2 team, who wants a championship when they know they were beat on the field. Every time an athlete is causght using steroids (whether college or pro), does the team get stripped of its wins? No. When a kid becomes academically inelligible, is it retroactive to the date he took his test or first started failing the course? No, he isn’t inelligible until the grades come out and it has been determined that he didn’t pass. When Pete Rose was busted for gambling, were the Reds stripped of their wins? No. You punish the individual. There’s no reason to strip the wins.
If something should happen to JoePa before next season & BB is back, he may very well go down #1 in wins. It’s a big if, but possible.
The inidividual misconduct does hurt the team/program through limited scholarships and crap like that. This so called “academic fruad” is nothing more than the players doing what the non-atheletes who took the same bogus course did. I think every school has a course like this. When I did my undergrad at UVA, there was Bice Pysch. Fraternities had their own exam finals, whith prior exams and answers for several classes. When I went to law school at FSU, many professors told the students to go study past exams and the model answers because professors love to recycle questions. How is this any different?
Several years ago, I taught 7th grade math at an inner city school. Half of the kids in the “advanced” class didn’t know their times tables. Some of the kids in my other classes were still at a pre-K reading level. That means they were still working on phonics (associating sounds with letters). Yes, this was in the 7th grade. How the kids passed the first 6 grades, I don’t know. I’m sure some of them make it through all 12 grades and are still at that same level. But b/c they can play ball, they get a second chance to learn some basic skills.
Now who should be punished for and how bad should they be punished. Punish the clubs by limiting scholarships? A better punishment might be to require the schools to expend more money toward tutoring and teaching some of these kids our system has failed rather than reduce the number of second chances given to the disadvantaged kids. What do you do with the tutors who were involved? Ban them from teaching for life and make them pay their salaries back. Punish the individual kids who cheated, because they each have personal responsibility for their actions. But the whole thing about stripping wins is just stupid. It hasn’t been done before and will likely never happen again unless Penn State has some trouble this year.
If it was a case of "accused" rather than proven by their own admission, it would be different
I’ll just have to disagree. I don’t have any problem with the ruling that by cheating, these student athletes became ineligible. I don’t have any problem with ruling that playing with ineligible players is ground for a forfeit. All it does is take away a stat in the wins column, it doesn’t actually hurt the kids who didn’t cheat. It allows for the survival of the future of the program rather than punishing kids who have yet to set foot on campus by way of scholarship reductions and TV and bowl bans.
>>---l>
I like the idea of punishing the individuals more. Someone suggested expunging the players stats for the years. That seems far more suitable. When you vacate wins you are also punishing the other players who were on the team and did NOT cheat. It’s not all about the coaches or school.
See I don't think it affects the players who didn't cheat
They really don’t care about if they’re credited with these wins, especially since they didn’t go to a conference championship game or anything significant. They know they won the games on the field and I really doubt that they care what the record books say about the technicalities. The only time it really affects the players is in the case of the track athletes, who I do feel bad for. But, if they had contributions from athletes that cheated on those teams, I can’t say it’s an outrageous penalty. It’s tough and we wish it didn’t happen, but the athletes did cheat and the rule isn’t unreasonable IMO.
>>---l>
No meaningful games???
What about the Track and Field “National Championship?” is that not meaningful?
No Cild Left Behind
BEST IDEA EVER!!! Instead of the bus stopping for the children, now it just runs over them and grounds them deeper and deeper into the wheels. Rather than correcting the problem in 1st grade, lets wait till that child can’t funtion and they are in 8th grade.
Hilarity ensues……..
*Child
Obviously I should have repeated the typing class in high school, or the proofreading class in middle school
Sounds like you were one of the one's left behind and that's why you know all about the program.
jk of course.
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Disagree
The NCAA has never interpreted ineligibility in this matter. If so, then anytime a player has illegal contact with an agent he would be instantly ineligible. But the NCAA has never ruled in that way until now. That was the point of the ACC’s asst commissioner who attended the original infractions meeting, but this is a penalty being pushed by only a single one of the Infractions Committee members (I think her last name is Beck).
It will be overturned because it is inconsistent with all their prior rulings in eligibility cases. The only real drama here is whether the COI tries to go back and add more penalties, something they’ve never done before. Of course, the COI had never combined 4 minor violations into a single major violation before, but that didn’t stop them in the FSU Footlocker case.
According to AC, this is FSU's main argument
Bill Williams: “The fact of the matter is that there was an across-the-board agreement between the NCAA and Florida State on student-athlete eligibility, and student-athletes gave up their academic due process rights in accepting the plan.”
I think they made a mistake in stressing how this case is unprecedented. I thought that precedent was their strongest argument, although I agree that this case doesn’t conform to previously precedented cases. This was widespread, institution aided, academic fraud. If they’re giving up the precedent argument and going to “We had a deal,” I’m not sure of their chances.
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I just want...
this whole mess to be over. Take the penalties and sweep this whole mess out the door along with TK and Bowden.
FSU vs The NCAA
Even though they overturned the Oklahoma case, these clowns won’t overturn ours for 3 reasons: 1) FSU beat the NCAA on the mascot/nickname case
2) The bias against the FSU dynasty
3) The love affiar for JoePa. This gives him the permanent leg up to “win” this race.
I respectfully disagree. IMO, I think it will be overturned and the wins will be restored.
However this is a 2-edged sword. It gives the innocent athletes their wins back, but at the same time it might give Bobby some illusions that he should stay forever.
>-----:----:------>Spear 'em then Scalp 'em
I just think this whole situation is stupid
Who was the smart ass that came out and said there was cheating going on? This was a class I took when I was at FSU. An online course about music where you take weekly or biweekly (i forget exactly how often) tests online at your own discretion. Which meant me and the other 20 people in my apartment complex that were in the class crowded into the Computer lab with our books and took our tests while looking up answers together because it made it faster to find the answers as a group. Is that cheating? really? an open book test that you take at your own discretion is just that, and fr a whole athletic department is to be punished because of it is just ridiculous. Its not like the Athletes were getting special treatment, if anything the academics department at FSU should be punished for putting such a ridiculous class in its curriculum. I am sure every university in the country has a class like this and no one reports cheating because in their eyes that’s not cheating, its something everyone knows happens when you give online tests. Had this happened at USC or ND or any of the other darling schools of the NCAA instead of Miami and FSU who everyone loves to hate it would have been dealt with very discretely and not much would have been done about it. Just another thing brought upon us because of our reputation.
That was part of my point
The players were doing what the non-athletes were doing. As I understand it, FSU has a very good music program, so why dumb it down?
A few years ago, my wife taught a graduate level course at FSU. She gave the students simple assignments like a worksheet with setences that had a word or two missing. The sentences were taken verbatim from the book. All the students had to do was read their assignments and fill in the blanks. It’s like something I had in high school. The amount of belly-moaning she got about how hard the assignments were was pathetic. WTF?
Here is the timeline according to FSU and the NCAA per the Sentinel.
2007
- March 23: Brenda Monk, a former Learning Specialist within Florida State’s Athletic Academic Support Services (AASS) department, directs one athlete to take an online quiz on behalf of another athlete. Monk provides the first athlete with the answers to the quiz.
- March 28: The athlete whom Monk directed to input quiz answers comes forward and admits the misconduct to his academic adviser, who works in AASS.
- March 29: The first athlete’s academic adviser alerts AASS Director Mark Meleney that possible academic fraud has transpired. Meleney alerts his direct supervisor, Karen Laughlin, the dean of Undergraduate Studies.
- March 30: Meleney and Laughlin inform Athletic Director Dave Hart that possible academic fraud has occurred within AASS.
- April 2: Hart meets with FSU President T.K. Wetherell to inform him of the transgression.
- April 3: FSU places Monk on leave.
- April-May: On an unspecified date in the spring, Wetherell orders FSU’s Office of Audit Services to conduct an investigation into possible violation of NCAA legislation. Investigators also discover that an AASS tutor enabled athletes to cheat in an online course, later identified by the Sentinel to be MUH 2051: Music of World Cultures.
- May 28: In a brief letter, Wetherell informs Hart that his contract will not be renewed.
- June: The audit staff begins interviewing approximately 118 of the 146 athletes who had taken the music course since spring 2006.
- July 5: Monk resigns.
- August: FSU’s Office of Audit Services concludes its interviews and determines that 23 athletes with remaining eligibility in several sports received improper assistance from either Monk or the tutor.
- September: FSU hires The Compliance Group, a consulting firm that specializes in NCAA compliance issues.
- Oct. 24: FSU seeks the advice of the NCAA during a teleconference. Officials agree the music course had been compromised.
- Oct. 25: Hart announces that his last day as AD will be Dec. 31. He insists that his departure is unrelated to the academic fraud investigation. By this point, two of Hart’s senior administrators — Pam Overton and Charlie Carr — have already resigned. And another, Kim Record, will soon resign. FSU hires Bill Proctor to be its interim AD.
- Early November: University officials decide to conduct more interviews with athletes who took the music course during the previous five semesters as well as Monk and the tutor.
- Late November: FSU reports to the NCAA that all athletes who had taken the music course during the fall 2006, spring 2007 and summer 2007 semesters would be required to retake the course in the spring 2008 semester. The university and the NCAA also agreed athletes who admitted receiving improper help would be suspended for 30 percent of their seasons.
- December: After hearing back from the NCAA about the approval of the 30-percent rule, FSU began scheduling additional interviews with athletes. Officials interviewed 75 individuals, and 39 admitted receiving improper assistance in the music course. On Dec. 31, FSU’s football team lost 35-28 to Kentucky in the Music City Bowl without approximately two dozen suspended players.
2008
- Jan. 9: Meleney is informed his contract will not be renewed.
- Feb. 13: FSU submits its final investigative report to the NCAA. FSU takes six “punitive actions,” including the placement of its athletic department on two years’ probation and the reduction of an unspecified number of scholarships in multiple sports.
- June 10: The NCAA serves Florida State with a notice of allegation, which FSU refuses to release, citing student privacy laws.
- Sept. 12: FSU releases to the public its formal written response to the NCAA’s notice of allegation, which charged the school with failing to monitor its academic support program, accused two university employees of unethical conduct and said the university failed to respond to a registrar’s report that questioned the academic performance of athletes in the online class.
- Oct. 18: FSU officials appear before the NCAA Committee on Infractions in Indianapolis.
- Oct. 30: An attorney for Monk tells the Sentinel she plans to sue the university.
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How Sad.....
Are our athletes really so “dumb” that they need tutor’s help to take an “online, open book test” where the questions are asked exactly as they are in the book? I took this class when I was at FSU and it was by far the easiest class I have ever taken probably as hard as Pre-K, that whole finger-painting and nap time thing was tough to grasp =P
This is an awesome case study for ethics.... the handling of the cheating that is... not so much whether its ethical to cheat.
"I'm falling apart, I'm barely breathing, With a broken heart thats still beating, In the pain is the healing, in Your Name I find meaning, So I'm holdin' on.. holdin' on to you."
Reminds me of the that episode of "Saved By the Bell: The College Years" where Benson was the ethics professor.
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Sorry for your misery, Frank.
I know how you feel. You might want to use this to end your pain:
http://www.handloads.com/images/images.asp?id=10
I just bought one and am waiting to take delivery, so you can borrow it.
I just bought one of these too: http://home.comcast.net/~navy87guy/home/image/MP9C_%20left.JPG
but you can’t borrow it, because I don’t want your brains gumming up the works.
That is so funny.
I really got into shooting when I was in Tallahassee. There used to be a football size dugout right next to Apalachee National Forest, about 15 feet deep, that the Highway Patrol used as a outdoor practice range until they got new digs and they left abandoned. I started out with my trusty Marlin .22 rifle going out there with some buddies and shooting beer bottles. I then moved up to a S & W Mod 19 Chrome .357 w/4" barrell. A few years later I got a Russian Makarov 9 × 18MM w/16 round clips, then a Glock Model 19c 9MM w/17 clips, and the last one I added to my collection is a Glock 22 .40 cal w/17 round clips. My bro-in-law is a police sergeant, so every couple of months he takes me to the range to blow off some steam. But I’ll tell you what, there is nothing like shooting the old S & W .357 with factory loads to get everyone at the range to ask you what the hell you’re shooting.
I guess out where you, are you can always go out into the desert to shoot. Wait that is not what I mean. You know what I mean.
>-----:----:------>Spear 'em then Scalp 'em
BTW, the picture is not of me. I love my Noles, but not that much.
>-----:----:------>Spear 'em then Scalp 'em
exactly
come on out and we’ll go into the desert to shoot- lots of isolated places.
(btw, you’ve got good taste in guns!)
My bro-in-law is able to buy one for non duty use every year with his police discount, and that is how I got the Glock's.
>-----:----:------>Spear 'em then Scalp 'em
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