Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/400621
UNDER THE DOME cess, one best described as a cloudy mystery wrapped within an enigma protected by a riddle. Russell supplied the first rays of sunshine through those clouds when he announced he would sit out this season but plans to return for the 2015 campaign. Vacating Past Wins Still Possible When Notre Dame president Rev. John Jenkins and director of athletics Jack Swarbrick held a press confer- ence Aug. 15 to announce the investigation into possible academic fraud, they were quite clear on the topic of potential vacated victories. "The university has decided that if the investigation determines the student-athletes would have been ineligible in past competitions, Notre Dame will voluntarily vacate any victories in which they participated," Jenkins said. "This difficult, though necessary, step is commensurate with the seriousness of the suspected academic dishonesty." On Oct. 5, Notre Dame announced in a statement it would not release the individual player-by-player find- ings. By Oct. 16, four of the five held out of action had publicly announced that they would not play during the remainder of the 2014 season. While a determination of whether the five student-athletes should have been ineligible in past seasons had yet to be announced, vacated victories would figure to follow, per Jenkins' statement, if the investiga- tion proved that result. On Oct. 14, head coach Brian Kelly — the only Notre Dame employee to field questions on the academic probe since Aug. 15 — said nobody had discussed the possibility of vacating wins with him. "It hasn't been addressed to me in a formal setting and talked about as here's the next step," Kelly said. "I haven't had that meeting with Jack Swarbrick about what is the next step, if there is a next step. We haven't had any concrete conversations about whether there is a next step. We haven't talked about it." Notre Dame has never vacated a win in its history. In recent years, Penn State vacated every victory from 1998-2011 as part of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, while USC vacated the final two wins of 2004 (which in- cluded the BCS National Championship Game win) and all of 2005. Because the act of vacating past wins is an unusual and sometimes confusing one, here are a few details on what the process entails: • When wins are vacated, the result remains a loss for the opponent. For the winner, it's as if the game was never played. For example, Notre Dame's record books reflect a 34-31 loss to USC on Oct. 15, 2005, in the "Bush Push" game. A glimpse at the Trojans' books would make it look as if it never happened. In another example, if Notre Dame were to vacate each victory from the 12-1 season in 2012, history would consider that team a 0-1 squad, with only the 42-14 loss to Alabama remaining. Statistics remain, but with an asterisk. • Vacated wins are typically only employed when institutional guilt or, to use a popular NCAA term, "lack of institutional control" is determined. On Aug. 15, Jenkins seemed to offer vacated wins regardless of whether either of those factors were found to be in play. • Vacating wins is a different penalty from the now rarely used forfeiture of games. With forfeiture, victories were retroactively awarded to the losing team. With Notre Dame at No. 1 in all-time winning per- centage, possible vacated wins from the past would be removed from the record books, but losses would not be added. — Andrew Owens