Notre Dame president rips NCAA’s denial of Irish’s appeal
Notre Dame’s president ripped the NCAA’s decision to deny the school’s appeal to restore 21 vacated football victories from an academic misconduct violation, saying the association “perverted” the notion that universities determine how they police academics.
The NCAA denied Notre Dame’s appeal Tuesday, wiping off the books all 12 wins from the Fighting Irish’s 2012 national championship game run under coach Brian Kelly.
In a letter to Notre Dame alumni, University President Fr. John Jenkins says the penalty was unprecedented considering who was involved in the misconduct, and the school was being punished for rigorously enforcing its honor code. He called the ruling unfair, referencing the recent North Carolina case in which the NCAA did not punish the school after an investigation of athletes taking irregular courses.
The appeals committee was not swayed and upheld the penalty passed down in November 2016 by the committee on infractions.
Notre Dame agreed to accept certain NCAA findings and acknowledged cheating involving several football players and a student athletic trainer, but appealed only the penalty that vacated victories.
The NCAA also fined the school $5,000 and placed it on one years’ probation after finding academic misconduct orchestrated by the trainer.
The NCAA said the trainer was employed by the athletic department from the fall of 2009 through the spring of 2013 and “partially or wholly completed numerous academic assignments for football student-athletes in numerous courses” from 2011 into 2013.
It said she did substantial coursework for two players and gave impermissible help to six others in 18 courses over two academic years.
In all, the NCAA said, three athletes ended up playing while ineligible, one during the 2012 season, which ended with a lopsided loss to Alabama in the BCS championship game, and the other two the following season, when the Irish went 9-4.
In his letter, Jenkins said the players were retroactively declared ineligible after Notre Dame investigated the misconduct in 2014 and recalculated the students’ grades.
“The NCAA has not chosen to ignore academic autonomy; it has instead perverted it by divorcing it from its logical and necessary connection to the underlying educational purpose,” Jenkins wrote.
The vacation of victories was a discretionary penalty. Notre Dame objected to the penalty, noting all previous NCAA academic misconduct cases that resulted in victories being vacated involved an administrator, coach, or person who served in an academic role.
NCAA mulls tying transfer eligibility to academic marks
The NCAA is considering allowing athletes who are doing well in the classroom to transfer with immediate eligibility and permitting incoming freshmen to back out of a national letter of intent if there is a head coaching change.
The NCAA’s Division I transfer working group concluded two days of meetings on Tuesday in Indianapolis. Justin Sell, the group chairman and athletic director at South Dakota State, said the group examined data on how transferring impacts academics as it develops concepts for rule reforms that could be presented to coaches, administrators and student-athletes for feedback.
The group will meet again in April and plans to have a model it can present to NCAA membership for comment.