Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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4 APRIL 2018 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED T here's an old saying that so often holds true that goes something like, "Let no good deed go unpun- ished." And, oh boy, did the Notre Dame football program find that out last month. Forever committed to its un- predictable method of levying disproportionate punishments to its member institutions, the NCAA announced Feb. 13 that it had denied Notre Dame's appeal from a 2016 ruling and upheld an order for the Irish football program to vacate all 21 of its victories from the 2012 and 2013 seasons. The initial ruling came down in November 2016 af- ter an internal university in- vestigation found that several members of the Irish football team broke the university honor code and violated NCAA ethi- cal conduct rules by accepting imper- missible academic help from an ND student athletic trainer. In summation, a part-time female trainer wanted to get in good with the Irish football players, so she did their homework. Upon discovery, Notre Dame promptly and properly reported these academic violations to the NCAA with the thought that student-to-student cheating didn't rise to the countless stories of corrupt college administra- tors keeping athletes eligible in the classroom to keep success and revenue churning on game day. But the NCAA considered this young lady a Notre Dame employee and therefore ruled these violations to be punishable by forcing the football program to rewrite its record books and fill its media guide with asterisks. Ironically, Notre Dame's quest to root out any academic fraud, safe- guard against a repeat performance and find certainty that any cheating was isolated and not program-wide became the catalyst for its own pun- ishment. In a written rebuttal after the NCAA's final ruling, Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., eloquently outlined the inconsistency with which the NCAA does its busi- ness and the hypocrisy it showed in holding a part-time 20-something stu- dent trainer to the same standard as a head coach or a university professor. "In every other case on record," Rev. Jenkins wrote of previous infractions at other schools, "the institutional representative of the university was employed as an administrator, coach, or person who served in an academic role." Strangely, had Notre Dame taken the low road and not applied its own honor code as the basis for its internal investigation — and instead, simply dismissed from school the players who cheated — the NCAA would've taken no action. "At best, the NCAA's decision in this case creates a randomness of out- come based solely on how an institu- tion chooses to define its honor code," Rev. Jenkins continued. "At worst, it creates an incentive for colleges and universities to change their honor code to avoid sanctions like that imposed here." That's assuming every school even subscribes to an honor code. In October 2016, the NCAA ac- knowledged that fake classes were organized by administrators at the University of North Carolina to help many scholarship athletes boost their GPAs to remain academically eligible and even graduate. Yet, because the "general student body" also had ac- cess to these crooked classes, the NCAA found no cause for sanctions at the school, not even a reprimand, when some had speculated the infractions were so egregious, that North Carolina might be forced to shut down some of its sports programs. The loss of 21 wins at Notre Dame may seem more of a symbolic than an actual pun- ishment. We all watched as the Irish started 12-0 in 2012 and played for the national championship, even if the NCAA now says Notre Dame didn't win a single game that season. But the Notre Dame football pro- gram is built on its tradition and his- tory, and being forced to rewrite the record books athletically is a dispro- portionate price to pay for the pur- suit of transparency and academic ac- countability. "We still beat Oklahoma. We still beat Wake Forest. We still beat all of those teams," Notre Dame head foot- ball coach Brian Kelly said when the sanctions were first announced about 16 months ago. "So you can put an asterisk next to it. If that makes you feel better, then that's fine with me." It's shameful that the NCAA rou- tinely turns a blind eye to the corrupt backdrop of college sports that in- cludes basketball programs built com- pletely on one-and-done mercenaries, sleazy summer travel basketball "rep- resentatives" lining the pockets of play- ers and coaches, and football programs that don't graduate even half of their guys, and then single out Notre Dame — one of the few remaining schools in the country where a student-athlete is exactly what the title implies. ✦ Notre Dame's Punishment Hardly Fit The Crime UPON FURTHER REVIEW TODD D. BURLAGE Todd D. Burlage has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 2005. He can be reached at tburlage@blueandgold.com Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins noted that the NCAA's decision to force the Irish football program to vacate all 21 of its victories from the 2012 and 2013 seasons "creates a randomness of outcome based solely on how an institution chooses to define its honor code." PHOTO BY BILL PANZICA