Sorry for the misleading title. I wanted to get your attention. During the recruiting business and countdown to Superbowl Sunday last week, I happened to overlook the following:
The NCAA Committee on Infractions announced the penalties in the University at Albany's text messaging case last Tuesday and just updated their website to reflect the results.
Now I know what you're asking, "why should I care about this?" Follow the jump and I'll feed you, baby birds.
A quote from the Committee on Infractions' findings:
"The summary disposition report was reviewed by the committee during its October 2008 meeting. On October 28 the committee informed the institution that it had accepted the findings in the report,..."
Notice that this is the same set of meetings that our University attended to state its case in front of the committee. In fact, the University at Albany was directly ahead of Florida State in the schedule.
I have personally believed, as have many others, that Florida State has had the NCAA's results in hand for several weeks now and is trying to negotiate the penalty. I am now convinced that this announcement of the results of the Albany case is the last official piece of business the Committe on Infractions has to deal with before the Florida State case.
Let's hope we can extend this until after signing day. While the projected penalties are a cloud that is still hanging over our program, we have been dealing with the potential fallout with recruits for several weeks now. I would rather things remain status quo until the recruits sign than to have this announcement come down during a recruiting dead period when we cannot contact prospects and assuage their fears.
There's your little NCAA update for the day. We can now return to our regularly scheduled recruiting talk.