Can Brain Kelly Survive Notre Dame Cheating Scandal?
23 Nov, 2016
Notre Dame will appeal the NCAA Division I Committee of Infractions’ recommendation to vacate its victories from the 2012 and 2013 seasons on the grounds that the penalty is excessive.
The NCAA released findings Tuesday that a former student athletic trainer violated NCAA ethical conduct rules by helping two players commit academic misconduct and providing impermissible benefits to six others. Notre Dame was 12-1 in 2012, losing to Alabama in the BCS national championship game, and 9-4 in 2013. It’s unclear how many of those 21 games the implicated players participated in.
Notre Dame is not contesting that the violations in the NCAA report occurred, just the forfeiture of wins. Other NCAA penalties on Notre Dame include a year of probation, a public reprimand for the school and a $5,000 fine and a two-year show-cause order against the student trainer. The athletics department also must disassociate from the former student trainer for two years. The penalties do not include scholarship reductions or a bowl ban.
Notre Dame will submit its case to the NCAA Infractions Appeals Committee and coach Brian Kelly said the school should hear back within 6-8 weeks.
At an expedited hearing on Sept. 23, Notre Dame argued four reasons for overturning the NCAA’s ruling:
Notre Dame already punished the players. The NCAA report did not name the players involved, but the case stems from Notre Dame’s public suspensions of KeiVarae Russell, DaVaris Daniels, Ishaq Williams, Kendall Moore and Eilar Hardy for academic violations prior to the 2014 season. Notre Dame reported the violations to the NCAA.
Notre Dame argues it already punished the players and that the vacation of wins “sends a disturbing message to the membership.” The NCAA’s response is that the student trainer worked for the athletic department and therefore must abide by NCAA bylaws. Because she provided academic support that made players ineligible, this is grounds for the penalty.
There was no finding that any school administrators or officials were implicated in the violation. “It was student-on-student cheating,” Kelly said during his weekly news conference. “There was nobody implicated. The NCAA agreed across the board with that finding. And it was clearly excessive. One of the options or clear reasons for appeal is that the penalty is excessive in its discretion. And we believe we have obviously grounds there.”
The NCAA says that while Notre Dame is correct that vacation of wins is not mandatory under the current NCAA bylaw, it fits in this situation and that prescribing it as a penalty involving academic misconduct is “historically consistent with the membership’s bylaws.” Previously, NCAA Bylaw 19.5.2 identified vacation of wins as appropriate when there was ineligible competition stemming from academic violations. However, the current bylaw does not identify academic violations as a qualifying example. The NCAA states in its report that this does not mean vacation of wins should not apply.
In its report, the NCAA Infractions Committee cites Division I COI IOP 4-16-4: “Vacation of wins is more appropriate when a case involves any of the following: academic violations, serious intentional violations, direct involvement of a coach or high ranking administrator, a large number of violations, the institution had a recent history of Level I, Level II or major violations or when the panel concludes that a failure to monitor or lack of institutional control existed.”
Similar academic misconduct cases involved professional staff members providing impermissible benefits to athletes. For example: Louisiana-Lafayette involved a former assistant coach, North Carolina a former student academic support tutor, and East Carolina a student-athlete who was hired as a tutor.
“The NCAA enforcement staff and the hearing panel agreed with Notre Dame that no such institutional misconduct occurred in this case,” Notre Dame president Rev. John I. Jenkins said in a statement. “Indeed, the only reason the NCAA reviewed the matter was because the misconduct involved a former fellow student who happened to participate in the University’s student trainer program — an activity which involved no responsibility for the academic work of student-athletes.”
Notre Dame’s case is most similar to one at East Carolina, but it differs because the “peer student in that case was employed as an academic tutor by the athletics department whereas the student in this case was employed in the athletics department as a student trainer.”
The NCAA maintains a vacation should still be implemented.
Athletic programs in the future will be less inclined to self-report such violations and risk the forfeiture of victories. Notre Dame argues that by prescribing vacation of wins, it will make programs less proactive about “firmly addressing academic misconduct involving student-athletes and might lead to athletically-driven changes to academic policy.”
The NCAA combats that by saying schools are expected to take “appropriate actions” regardless of “whatever penalties may result from instances of academic misconduct.”
“Here’s what I can tell you,” Kelly said Tuesday. “We did the right thing. … I’m proud of the people that represented us here at Notre Dame during this time. And if doing the right thing means that you’ve got to put an asterisk next to these games, that’s fine with me. We still beat Oklahoma. We still beat Wake Forest. We still beat all those teams. So you can put an asterisk next to it. If that makes you feel better, then that’s fine with me.”
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