Player reinstated But wins not restored
The University of Regina Rams have their player back, but not their victories.
It was announced on Thursday that a player who was declared academically ineligible has been reinstated by a U Sports committee. However, the three wins that Regina forfeited for using the unidentified player will not and cannot be restored.
“I know there are a lot of people who are pretty disgruntled with that and they’re having a hard time wrapping their brain around the decision,” said Rams head coach Steve Bryce, whose team faces the host University of Calgary Dinos in a must-win game on Friday.
“It’s something that right now I can’t really focus too much on, because we’ve got a big game versus Calgary here that does require 100 per cent of our focus, and we can’t be distracted from that.”
Following the Oct. 5 announcement of the sanctions, the U of R prepared an appeal to the national governing body of university sports. The player was declared eligible for the remainder of the season, but that’s not of any imminent benefit to the Rams, since he’s away from the team while dealing with a family situation.
“For the player’s sake, I’m happy for him,” Bryce said.
“It was a sticky situation for him from the get-go. That part was pretty unfortunate, that he had to go through that in the first place. It’s good for him, but I really don’t know anything that it changes with our status or with our games at all.”
Did Bryce have any optimism that the forfeitures would be rescinded?
“I don’t know if it was optimism. It was wishful thinking, if anything,” he said.
“I think I said, ‘If the football fairy wants to sprinkle some dust on it, we’ll definitely take it, and take our wins back that we earned in the first place.’ But it wasn’t anything more than that, for sure.”
U Sports president and CEO Graham Brown said Thursday that there isn’t any mechanism for overturning the sanctions.
“At the end of the day, our rules are very clear,” he said.
“We don’t have the flexibility to modify them during the period of time for which the player played and he or she was ineligible. Those games are, in fact, nullified. That’s not open for interpretation. It’s not open to apply an alternative sanction.
“A committee can’t look at that and say, ‘Well, instead of five games, let’s give them two games.’ It’s absolutely black and white. We don’t have that flexibility.”
Brown noted that the rules are developed by the member universities and associations. U Sports is responsible for the enforcement and administering of sanctions.
The U of R’s athletic department self-reported the eligibility issue when it was discovered, at which point the football team had a 3-2 record. The team is now 1-5.
“On what grounds were they actually going to appeal the actual self-disclosure?” Brown said.
“They brought the issue to our attention. They brought it forth and it was, in fact, an ineligible player, so there wasn’t really anything they could appeal on . ...
“Certainly, if you’re aligned with Rams football, this is a very severe sanction, but our rules unfortunately don’t allow us to mitigate what the final terms of the sanction are.”