NCAA Sanctions, Vacated ACC Titles And The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets
by Brian Favat on Jul 14, 2011 7:30 PM EDT
in Boston College Football
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PrintAs I'm sure you've heard by now, the NCAA rained down hard on the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets today.
"Georgia Tech was fined $100,000 by the NCAA, stripped of its 2009 ACC championship in football and placed on four years of probation on Thursday for failure to cooperate with its investigation into the football and men's basketball programs."
Consistent with NCAA procedures, Georgia Tech must give back its 2009 ACC Championship trophy and the conference will not designate a champion. Basically, it's as if the 2009 ACC Championship Game never happened. And no, Clemson will not retroactively be awarded the 2009 title, which means the Tigers ACC title drought stands at 20 (which is one year less than Georgia Tech's outright ACC title drought, which now stands at 21).
Further, the football team will have to vacate the final three games of the 2009 season, including a loss to rival Georgia and the Orange Bowl loss to Iowa. Even though Tech must return the 2009 title, the football program did not lose scholarships and there won't be a postseason ban in place, though the program does get four years of probation that will last through July 2015.
The basketball team gets rapped on the knuckles a bit harder in this whole thing. The Jackets will have a limit of 10 official visits for men's hoops during the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons, and self-imposes a reduction of two men's basketball recruiting days during this summer's evaluation period.
Without a reduction of scholarships or a postseason ban, these sanctions won't affect Boston College much at all. The Jackets are only vacating three games -- of which they only won one -- and BC and Tech didn't even hook up in 2009. The Eagles are scheduled to face each other in 2012 (away) and 2013 (home), but without a reduction in scholarships, these sanctions will have little to no effect on those games. But as the NCAA's Infractions Committee stated in its report, "This case provides a cautionary tale of conduct that member institutions should avoid while under investigation for violations of NCAA rules."
Moral of the story: If you refuse to cooperate with the NCAA, be prepared for a swift and severe punishment.
Two final thoughts on this situation as it relates to Boston College.
1) Can you imagine how Georgia Tech fans are feeling today? I really can't wrap my head around what this situation would have been like if the Eagles actually broke through and won the ACC Football title in 2007 or 2008 and then seemingly out of nowhere, the NCAA swoops in and takes that title away from you. Several BCPD officers would have to be dispatched to the Tobin Bridge to stop all the Superfans preparing to jump off it. Goes to show you the importance of running a clean program and the myriad of inane NCAA rules a program can violate at any point in time. And if your program does happen to violate one of those rules, cooperation is the best policy, obv.
2) If you are a Clemson fan, does a small sense of schadenfreude come over you today after hearing Georgia Tech's punishment? What if this happened to Virginia Tech and the Hokies were forced to vacate either the 2007 or 2008 ACC titles? Would that make one of BC's two ACC Championship Game losses a little easier to swallow?
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If this happened to VT...
I wouldn’t feel any better about our losses unless one of VT’s best players was academically ineligible for the game or was using PEDs and played anyways.
What was the crime here?
Taking $300 in swag from an agent?
It is not the critic who counts; The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; and if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Yeah, that is the reason why Clemson shouldn’t feel like they were screwed out of an ACC championship…
Do you know what the bad conduct was?
It is not the critic who counts; The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; and if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
It wasn't the crime, it was the cover-up
In a 26-page report outlining the alleged violations and sanctions, the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions accuses various Georgia Tech personnel of “adopt[ing] an obstructionist approach” and a “combative attitude” toward the subsequent investigation, of defying NCAA instructions, of “omitt[ing] key information and embellish[ing] other information,” and finally of playing the player in question in final three games of the season despite serious concerns about his eligibility.
Editor, BC Interruption
NCAA is out of control
you lose a championship because some pinhead investigator does not like your attitiude. How utterly ridiculous and how subjective. Esp when the underlying ‘crime’ was one player getitng $300 in swag from an agent. Meanwhile, all the stars at Alabama and elesewhere are openly drinvg around campus in Hummers and BMs. WTF x 1000!
It is not the critic who counts; The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; and if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
The Newton family laughing all the way to the bank …
Editor, BC Interruption
by Brian Favat on Jul 15, 2011 11:27 AM EDT up reply actions
well
Moral of the story: If you refuse to cooperate with the NCAA, be prepared for a swift and severe punishment.
—unless you’re a glamour program, in which case the NCAA will give you a stern talking-to, hem and haw a bit, and give you a punishment lighter than the hoi polloi would receive.
geez
these NCAA guys have some very lethal egos.
It is not the critic who counts; The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.
Clemson fan
Yeah, it doesn’t make that game suck any less. We probably still would have found a way to lose that game if someone like Thomas was the one suspended anyway. Steele’s gameplan for that game made no sense whatsoever. It did not resemble the first game’s gameplan or last year’s gameplan in the slightest. It was just awful.
Clemson fan pt2
agreed. We didn’t win it on the field, and while we had one guy leave it all on the field (CJ Spiller), and while I am a homer, I do not think we deserve to claim it. Sucks. If we had won, that question would never have been asked..
Don't give up, don't ever give up ~ Jim Valvano
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