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Date Posted: 14:40:06 02/01/02 Fri
Author: Jason
Subject: Alabama barely escapes the death penalty

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- The NCAA banned Alabama from bowl games for two years Friday, cut scholarships and placed the storied football program once run by the late Bear Bryant on probation for five years because of a recruiting scandal.

The sanctioning organization said it considered giving the Crimson Tide the most severe punishment, the "death penalty," but decided against it.

"They were absolutely staring down the barrel of a gun," said Thomas Yeager, chairman of the infractions committee. He described the case as one of the worst heard by the panel.

The university was accused of 11 major violations and five minor charges under two former coaches.

Alabama contested the two most publicized charges involving claims of boosters making five-figure payments to lure two recruits.

But it admitted some violations and imposed penalties on itself, including a reduction of 15 scholarships over three years and the temporary disassociation of three boosters it said were at the heart of the recruiting scandal.

The NCAA took those punishments and added more, reducing the number of football scholarships the school can award by 21 over three years. It also said the university would face tougher penalties if it did not permanently disassociate the boosters."

My thoughts~

As someone who remembers SMU getting the death penalty, I find it appalling that Alabama was spared. Of course, the only football history that SMU had to speak of was "The Pony Express" backfield of Eric Dickerson/Craig James... so once again, the rules are "different" because a team like Alabama has such a storied history.

How laughable is it, that they tried to punish themselves with 15 scholarships being taken away, and a TEMPORARY disassociation with the boosters involved? So kudos to the NCAA for at least taking away 6 more scholarships, taking away bowl games for the next 2 years (which may be rendered inconsequential anyway, since Alabama may not be good enough to even make a bowl game) and 5 years probation... but I still think they deserved the death penalty. But, for all intents and purposes, this is pretty close to the death penalty for a school like Alabama. With the Antonio Langham scandal surfacing in 1995, Alabama was banned from bowls for one year, and stripped of 17 scholarships, and look what it's done to their performance since then? Two years without bowls, and being stripped of 21 scholarships is pretty devastating. In addition to deterring possible recruits, sanctions like that are severe enough to get players to transfer. The effects of this punishment will last a lot longer than 2 years of bowl ban, or 3 years of losing scholarships. The funny thing is, almost all of the recruits that were (probably unknowingly) involved in this whole scandal never made it to Alabama, or left after a brief time there. I hope that their high school coaches are receiving punishment also (at least losing their jobs) for accepting that much money, and if I was a rival university, I'd be suing the heck out of the high school coaches and the Alabama boosters involved.

I'm sure that Alabama will recover in time...and I'm sure that the University is a fine institution. But the people you hire as coaches, and the boosters you associate with, will be looked at as a direct representation of the University itself. I don't think Alabama will have nearly the longstanding devastation that SMwho? has suffered... but it's not going to be pretty for a few years. And any success after that will be looked at with a distrusting eye. I'm sure all this opinion will piss some people off... oh well. Take it for what it's worth...just an opinion.

The rest of the above quoted article can be found at:

http://msn.espn.go.com/ncf/news/2002/0201/1321198.html

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