UPDATE 2:15
Just a few more notes:
- Syracuse football vacates 11 wins in total.
- Syracuse basketball invalidates wins for a period dating back to May of 2003, conveniently a month after Syracuse’s national championship win over Kansas.
- The 108 wins Boeheim lost drop him back to 6th all time, with little to no shot of achieving 1,000 career wins.
UPDATE 1:21:
Syracuse supporters should consider themselves lucky if this is true:
Crazy detail in the Syracuse report. Director of basketball ops and others had players’ passwords, would email their professors as them.
— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) March 6, 2015
1:05PM
NCAA’s Britton Banowsky: “The investigations in this case went on for an extremely excessive period of time.”
— Sam Blum (@SamBlum3) March 6, 2015
Jim Boeheim will be suspended for nine conference games and Syracuse basketball will face a reduction in scholarships beginning in 2016-2017 over four years (the early rumor is three per year), when commitments begin to open back up on their roster. They will not face any further post-season ban, which is a major bullet to dodge considering the protracted nature of this probe. The program has also been placed on five years probation.
Boeheim will have to forfeit a lot of wins from 2004-2007 and 2010-2012 (early count between 100-110), depending on the games in which the ineligible players participated. The football team will also have to forfeit wins from 2004-2007 for the same reason.
Here was an earlier statement from Syracuse chancellor Kent Syverud before sanctions were handed down:
“We have taken responsibility for past violations and worked hard to ensure they are not repeated,” university chancellor Kent Syverud said in a release. “I am disappointed for our current men’s basketball players who must shoulder this postseason ban. I also recognize that not participating in postseason play will be disappointing for many in the University community and to all Orange supporters.”
Well Chancellor, it appears that the NCAA didn’t feel your institution had taken quite enough responsibility in self-imposing a post-season ban for this year alone (such an insult to the universe’s collective intelligence) as a result of its’ own internal investigation. This probe, which dated back 10 years, and Syracuse’s reporting which dates back 14 years to 2001, have landed the basketball program in triple-dutch.
The Chancellor also disagrees with the NCAA in the aftermath:
Syracuse Chancellor Kent Syverud said in email the school “strongly disagrees” that it failed to maintain control of athletics program.
— Sam Blum (@SamBlum3) March 6, 2015
Jim Calhoun was suspended for three Big East games at the beginning of 2011-2012 when UCONN failed to monitor their program and let a booster get too close for comfort. Many of the allegations in both situations were similar, with regard to impermissible benefits and academics, but UCONN actually failed to meet the APR standards, wherein Syracuse has yet to fail in that regard. The most adequate explanation for the severity of Syracuse’s charges when compared to the Huskies is that the probe dates back as far as it does.
If I’m an Orange supporter I would find the following troubling:
- 10 year probe, but only self-reported at 8 years, so it’s being misrepresented as Syracuse whistle-blowing. Had the NCAA not been sniffing around already, would Syracuse have ever uttered a peep about their misconduct in 2007.
- The continuing trend of ignoring the rules in 2010-2012, when both your own internal investigators and NCAA bloodhounds were on the hunt.
- The fact that Syracuse conveniently found it appropriate to take away the one post-season from themselves just a smidge after the NCAA had declared their investigation complete in October as a preemptive strike. The disingenuous nature of this is so blatant, that you have to wonder if this incurred “additional wrath”. In retrospect, just waiting to take their medicine might have been a better course of action.
- Will Boeheim still be around to face the music in 2016-2017? Already age 70, it would almost make sense to have a break-up plan in place, and somebody will take this job because it IS Syracuse, but will they attract the same candidate pool they would have without sanctions still ongoing? Ask Penn State how that goes.
- All those football wins that are going to be erased, I kid, I kid.
It wouldn’t be the NCAA without a cash grab though, would it? The NCAA is going to recoup Syracuse’s tournament money from 2011-2013. The Orange made the 2013 Final Four.
More to come on the sanctions as we are updated. Follow along with us on @insidetheacc