The penalties handed down to Southern Cal by the NCAA regarding the Trojans’ football, men’s basketball and women’s tennis programs are pretty intense. The story broke late Wednesday night, and officially announced Thursday. By now, you know the main bullet points — football gets a two-year postseason ban, docked 30 scholarships over three years and four years probation. Maybe you recall the last time this happened, to Alabama in 2002. In Dennis Franchione‘s second year, the Crimson Tide were hit with something similar, though the transgressions weren’t as bad — it was more because Bama received its first sanctions a few years earlier.
The hits on football do go beyond what’s on the ESPN crawl. Southern Cal and Reggie Bush cannot be involved again. Ever. No celebration of the Heisman Trophy, no bringing out the ball before the game, no nothing. For those of you keeping score, one Trojan running back allegedly committed double murder, making him persona non grata on campus, and another committed violations so egregiously that the college athletics’ governing body banned him from his alma mater.
What Bush did, and who he did it with, is simply incredible. He accepted about $30,000 cash from an agent who, with his partner, got together with Bush and Bush’s parents. The agents provided the family with a rent-free house in a nice neighborhood, put up most of the money for a $19,000 used 1996 Chevrolet Impala SS, and tricked it out. Additionally, there were thousands of dollars worth of loans, hotel rooms, plane tickets and other such things given to Bush. This is old-school, Auburn-style violations. And when Bush tried to back out of signing on with these guys, they allegedly employed the intimidating services of none other than Suge Knight. Actor/comedian Faizon Love got mixed up in it. It’s really quite a tale.
With all the actors and agents hanging around the players, the NCAA stepped in and banned that, too. College football’s version of “Showtime” got put in front of a firing squad and dispatched. Tacked on is the vacating of all wins from the 2005 Orange Bowl through the following 2005 regular season. All of Bush’s Heisman numbers are off the books. However, it looks like while Bush may be able to keep the trophy, the national championship is up in the air.
The NCAA doesn’t have control over the Bowl Championship Series. But the way talk has come down from the BCS, when it officially meets they may well vacate the 2004 national championship. If the guys are smart, there won’t be a BCS champion that year. Oklahoma backed into the game and was destroyed. Auburn went undefeated but didn’t get invited. The clusterfuck that would open up with awarding the championship to either of these two teams is so migraine-inducing that standing pat with no winner would be the preferred path.
As for basketball, screw it. O.J. Mayo spent one year on campus, there were shady things and we don’t particularly care about college basketball, especially as it involves the Pac-10. The NCAA more or less agreed with the school’s self-imposed penalties.
Which brings us to women’s tennis. Who saw this one coming? An international player made unauthorized long-distance calls over about three years, costing the university more than $7,000. Southern Cal vacated its own wins between November 2006 to May 2009. A girl gets homesick and everybody on the team has nothing official to look back on for their time on the court.
One question raised from all of this, or more like an observation, is that the principals basically got away with it. Sure, Bush can’t be officially involved with the university, but that isn’t stopping him from making bank with the New Orleans Saints, living it up and nailing hot pieces of tail from coast to coast. Former head coach Pete Carroll talks total shit from his new post with the Seattle Seahawks, jumping off the ship like so many rats and then has the gall to say he had no idea what was going on and the NCAA exaggerated. Je-sus. But they basically get away clean. If there’s any justice, athletics director Mike Garrett will be shit-canned shortly. He, of some massive swinging balls of brass, said the NCAA came down on Southern Cal more or less because of jealousy. Yeah, Mike. Everyone wishes they went to a private school in Compton. THAT’s why three of your athletic programs got hit hard after a four-year investigation.
What Carroll and Garrett don’t seem to realize is 1) Southern Cal was actually involved in this and deserved the hammer and 2) it was the Trojans’ turn in the clink. Alabama football didn’t receive its first probation until 1995. For a while, it looked like the NCAA was treating traditional powers like NBA referees do with star players. That ended in the ’90s. It shouldn’t be a mistake that Notre Dame, the other pristine football power, started tanking again about that same time.
Granted, this is speculation, but it would seem to us that former coach Lou Holtz put the kibosh on whatever might have been going on that was against the rules, seeing how the Tide got its ass spanked. So, the Irish started losing. They still haven’t fully recovered (eg. a run of great seasons) from what happened in the mid-’90s. Miami was known as straight-up criminals for years before having to endure some mediocre seasons and turn that around.
So, suck it up, Southern Cal. We know y’all are — by definition — in SoCal, but quit being such douchebags and deal with your time in the wilderness. It takes a few years to get back in saddle. You’re probably going to lose a few more to UCLA and Stanford and whomever else. And part of that may just be because you hired Kiffykins.
