FSU Football and Hoops Get Four Years NCAA Probation

NCS Football44

The Biggest Penalty Will Be Paid Personally By Bobby Bowden

Fellow ACC Atlantic Division member Florida State has been placed on four years probation by the NCAA:

ESPN

The Florida State football team will vacate an undetermined number of wins, serve four years’ probation, and face a reduction in scholarships and other penalties due to what the NCAA described Friday as “major violations” from an academic cheating scandal.

Nine other programs were also penalized — baseball, men’s track and field, women’s track and field, men’s swimming, women’s swimming, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, softball and men’s golf — and face the same sanctions. Overall, the scandal involved 61 athletes.

The football team will be limited to 83 total scholarships in 2008-09; 82 in 2009-10; and 84 in 2010-11; the maximum usually allowed by the NCAA is 85. Florida State self-imposed the loss of the two scholarships for 2008-09, and will self-impose the loss of three scholarships for 2009-10. The NCAA added an additional loss of scholarship from the maximum in 2010-11.

The Orlando Sentinel adds that the sanctions will negatively impact Bobby Bowden’s NCAA wins record, because the forfeits

“include regular season contests, postseason contests and any NCAA championship competition. The individual records of the student-athletes shall be vacated as well.

“Further, the institution’s records regarding all of the involved sports, as well as the records of the head coaches of those sports will reflect the vacated records and will be recorded in all publications in which these records are reported, including, but not limited to, institution media guides, recruiting material, electronic and digital media plus institution and NCAA archives. Any public reference to tournament performances won during this time shall be removed, including, but not limited to, athletics department stationery and banners displayed in public areas such as the venues in which the specified teams compete.”

All in all, for FSU it could have been worse. They do not lose any post-season rights, television rights and the scholarship impact is fairly minimal.  No scholarship penalties have been announced for the FSU hoops squad, so it looks like the brunt of the punishment will be absorbed by the football side of the house.

Naturally there are cries of how unfair it all is to Bobby Bowden in the same Florida newspaper:

NCAA is levying cruel and unusual punishment by making Bobby Bowden forfeit victories

If indeed FSU does have to forfeit a significant number of football victories, Bobby Bowden’s legacy sadly becomes tainted. Bobby is currently one victory behind Joe Paterno on the all-time wins list. If numerous victories are forfeited, it would all but end Bobby’s chances of becoming the all-time winningest coach in major college football history.

It would be a shame if Bowden has to end of his brilliant career soiled by the stink of this investigation.  Especially when you know he had absolutely nothing to do with this academic scandal.

A fair point, but the thing is that Bowden no doubt got some benefit from players remaining eligible to play because of academic fraud, so the victories are indeed tainted.  That’s not to say Coach Bowden had anything whatsoever to do with the problems, but the NCAA is punishing the university as a whole, and sadly a good man is caught up in a bad situation.

NCS Football

44 Responses to FSU Football and Hoops Get Four Years NCAA Probation

  1. Greywolf 03/06/2009 at 3:58 PM #

    losing 2 or 3 scollies a year isn’t exactly the death penalty. Considering some of the punishment NCSU has absorbed, I was a little POed when I read it.

  2. YANCSSB 03/06/2009 at 4:01 PM #

    Wow. That’s harsh.

  3. timswar 03/06/2009 at 4:06 PM #

    They weren’t punishing FSU. They were punishing Bowden.

    This was solely issued to deny him a chance at the record for most wins. They’re putting blame for the situation on his shoulders and punishing him for it the only way they can without forcing his removal from the program (which would cause too much of an uproar). The NCAA is attempting to make the point that the Coach, no matter his reputation, is responsible for the integrity of the players in his program. Losing institutional control will be punished. You can argue all you want about whether or not the actions will succeed in that.

    Bowden will be pissed, the rest of the university gets off lightly by comparison. He’ll probably appeal it and since his name is big enough he’ll probably be able to pressure the NCAA into restoring his wins.

    Btw, this was way worse than anything NCSU has ever done, you’d think the University would have gotten some kind of post-season bans.

  4. MatSci94 03/06/2009 at 4:07 PM #

    Any chance they might need a new AD? I hear there are lots of lakes and golf in FL.

  5. Alpha Wolf 03/06/2009 at 4:09 PM #

    timswar, I think the idea to vacate wins was offered to the NCAA by FSU, not vice versa. If so, then FSU threw their own coach and his legacy under the bus. I wonder if this was an attempt to make it clear to him it is time to retire. Your thoughts?

  6. anti-smurf 03/06/2009 at 4:32 PM #

    Had this occurred at State, I would bet we would not have a football program much longer. What a joke! It’s like unc/dook in hoops. if anything, they would only get minor sanctions.

    I think this is more about Bowden, and possibly pushing him towards retirmenet. Now the flip side – If you’re Jimbo Fisher – what do you think?

  7. graywolf 03/06/2009 at 4:39 PM #

    Had this occurred at State we would not have a football program. The BOT and company would have made sure of the “death penalty”

  8. Tar Heel Fan 03/06/2009 at 4:52 PM #

    Alpha,

    That is most certainly where this is heading. It does give leverage to anyone who wants Bowden to retire and if it puts him too far behind JoePa then what is the point of allowing him to stick around for that record?

  9. BoKnowsNCS71 03/06/2009 at 5:04 PM #

    This would not have happened at State.

  10. Coach Abatemarco 03/06/2009 at 5:07 PM #

    I think they should have to take our athletic director as punishment!

  11. Wolfpack_1995 03/06/2009 at 5:20 PM #

    Does not suprise me.

    They are the F$U Criminoles! When they tore through the ACC there first 5 years I betcha they were cheating then too!

    JoePa > Bobby anyways.

  12. MattN 03/06/2009 at 5:38 PM #

    How lucky for them they are not named North Carolina State…

  13. wufpup76 03/06/2009 at 5:58 PM #

    Not exactly a death blow.

    How about that? A university with the name “State” attached to it and it gets off actually rather easily given the violations.

  14. redfred2 03/06/2009 at 6:11 PM #

    Boys, boys, don’t be too quick to judge, these are extremely stiff penalties when considering this is The PC/Watered Down/NBA’s Bitch/Can’t Figure They’re Causing Their Own Problems By Letting EVERYTHING Get TOTALLY Out of HAND Before They Even Lift a Finger to Prevent It in the First Place/and The New NCAA/In-Depth Investigative Body ONLY.

  15. LRM 03/06/2009 at 6:26 PM #

    This is eerily reminiscent of how SMU — a program to the 80s that Florida State was to the 90s — plunged into oblivion. In this case, Florida State has been in a recession for the better part of the decade (a recession, mind you, I wish we were “suffering” through here).

    It’ll be interesting to see how this affects Florida State’s attempts at returning to national prominence, and in turn how that affects the ACC. Florida State is an integral part of the ACC retaining any sort of credibility within the BCS, since, after all, the whole basis behind expansion was football-centric. Without Florida State’s lone dominance of the ACC — and for the most part, nationally — for a decade, the ACC would have been cast away with the WAC and MWC.

    Miami joining Florida State in the ACC was a sure bet to solidify its place at the BCS table. Unfortunately, Florida State has faltered for several years while neither Miami nor anyone else has taken advantage of that opportunity and stepped up.

  16. redfred2 03/06/2009 at 6:30 PM #

    Oh man, I forgot about Swofford, this is bad news, I wonder how his hair is looking right now? I’ll bet it’s still PERFECT.

  17. Coach Abatemarco 03/06/2009 at 6:34 PM #

    STUPID NEWS AND OBSERVER!

    SOMEBODY NEEDS TO BRING UP THAT THIS NEWSPAPER HAS SHAFTED US ONCE AGAIN. ON THE SAME DAY THAT FSU GETS BY WITH CRAP LIKE THIS WITH LOW LIFE ATHLETES AND CHEATERS THE NEWS AND OBSERVER ALSO FORGETS TO LIST THE NC STATE PLAYER THAT MADE THE ALL ACADEMIC ACC BASKETBALL TEAM.

    AS A FORMER TEACHER OF JOHNNY THOMAS I AM PROUD TO SAY THAT HE MADE THE ALL ACADEMIC BASKETBALL TEAM AND HAS WORKED VERY HARD TO MAINTAIN A 3.0 GPA WITH ALL OF THE INJURY REHAB HE HAS GONE THROUGH AND RIGORS OF TRAVELING, PRACTICE, ETC. HE WORKS VERY HARD TO GET THE GRADES AND THE N&O JUST HAPPENS TO LIST EVERYBODY ELSE IN THE ACC BUT NC STATES VERY OWN JT. I HOPE HIS LEGS IMPROVE BECAUSE HE IS DYING TO SHOW THE WOLFPACK NATION THAT HE CAN PLAY BALL IN THE ACC. HE IS A FINE YOUNG MAN AND IS A GREAT REPRESENTATIVE OF NC STATE ATHLETICS!
    as nice of a guy that he is i would love nothing more to see him stick his groin right in Vasquez’s face on a monster jam in the acc tournament next week
    go pack!

    What exactly did the all caps add to your post beyond making it unreadable?
    VaWolf82

  18. redfred2 03/06/2009 at 6:45 PM #

    ^That does STINK!!!

    Wasn’t there a huge hubbub early on about the quality of the players that Sidney Lowe was bringing into the program, with Johnny Thomas being a “concern” to some of the gentile folks around here?

    Great job Johnny Thomas!!!

    And thanks for bringing that good news to our attention Coach Abatemarco!

    Add that info to the interesting statisical tidbit that Alpha shared yesterday, and the cannon is pretty well-stocked with ammo for some time to come.

  19. WTNY 03/06/2009 at 7:23 PM #

    I think they should have to take our athletic director as punishment!

    Good one!

  20. howlie 03/06/2009 at 7:26 PM #

    When will we get clarification on WHICH games were forfeited, and how they affect our [& other teams’] final records?

    Will the ACC take additional measures to ask for money to be returned from FSU’s bowl game–to be redistributed to the other ACC teams [horrifically unlikely, I suppose].

  21. LRM 03/06/2009 at 7:51 PM #

    I’m not sure when they take away wins from one team, they re-assign them to the other team, so I don’t think anyone else would be affected. And since the ACC distributes all revenue evenly, I’m not sure this matters, either.

  22. wufpup76 03/06/2009 at 7:53 PM #

    Somebody want to help me out on when the Golenbock essay is coming out on this?

  23. TheCOWDOG 03/06/2009 at 7:59 PM #

    Santion, not probation.

    As I live and breath, there will never be another NCAA ” probation. ”

    Sing with me now
    “Oh the times they are a ( have been ) changing”

    Too much to lose. Integrity not included.

  24. TheCOWDOG 03/06/2009 at 8:16 PM #

    I meant sanction.

  25. buttPACKer 03/06/2009 at 8:57 PM #

    THF,

    I think you’re spot-on. . . It will essentially remove the ONLY reason for Bowden to stay in the game. They are pushing his wheelchair toward the door, without a doubt.

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