The Goat Pen

It is D-Day. I have 57 minutes until it starts. See you on the other side.

Congrats. DS.

congrats and thanks for inviting us

Yeah. My invitation must have been lost, too.

It was nice knowing him.

Adieu, chubby one, adieu.

19.5.2 Penalties for Major Violations. Penalties for a major violation shall be significantly more severe than those for a secondary violation and shall be consistent with the penalty structure and guidelines used by other regulatory committees (e.g., Division I Committee on Academic Performance). The Committee on Infractions may impose one or more of the following penalties: (Revised: 4/28/11 for any institution that receives a notice of inquiry after 4/28/11)

(a) Public reprimand and censure.

(b) Probationary period for up to five years (including a periodic in-person monitoring system, written institutional reports, and institutional affirmation that current athletics policies and procedures conform to all requirements of NCAA regulations).

(c) Suspension of institutional staff members from their duties for a specified period if such staff members are determined by the Committee on Infractions to have engaged in or condoned a major violation.

(d) Reduction in the number of financial aid awards (as defined in Bylaw 15.02.4.1) that may be awarded during a specified period.

(e) Reduction in the number of expense-paid recruiting visits to the institution in the involved sport.

(f ) Prohibition against, or limits on, recruiting activities by some or all coaching staff members in an involved sport.

(g) Prohibition against specified competition in the sport (including, but not limited to, postseason competition, invitational tournaments and exempt contests or dates of competition, such as foreign tours or contests in Alaska or Hawaii), particularly in cases in which:

(1) An involved individual remains employed at the institution;
(2) A significant competitive advantage resulted from the violation;
(3) The violation reflects a lack of institutional control, failure to monitor a program, or a violation of the cooperative principle set forth in Bylaw 32.1.4;
(4) The violation includes findings of academic fraud; or
(5) The institution is a repeat violator (as defined in Bylaw 19.5.2.1).​

(h) Vacation of a record in a case in which a student-athlete has competed while ineligible, particularly in a case involving academic fraud, serious intentional violations, direct involvement of a coach or a high-ranking school administrator, a large number of violations, competition while academically ineligible, a finding of failure to monitor or lack of institutional control, a repeat violator, or a case in which vacation or a similar penalty would be imposed if the underlying violations were secondary. The penalties may include one or more of the following:

(1) Vacation of individual records and performances;
(2) Vacation of team records and performances, including wins from the career record of the head coach in the involved sport, or, in applicable cases, reconfiguration of team point totals; or
(3) Return of individual or team awards to the Association.​


I'm not sure I'd put alot of stock in what that lawyer was saying unless he has first hand knowledge from someone in the NCAA infractions committee

and we have a triple crown winner!

Are you saying DS just married a Chinese horse?

eCat wrote:they made it pretty clear in the NOA they didn't care that it was open to all students.

Although the general student body also had access to the anomalous AFRI/AFAM courses, student-athletes received preferential access to these anomalous courses, enrolled in these anomalous courses at a disproportionate rate to that of the general student body and received other impermissible benefits not available to the general student body in connection with these courses.

read...grades changes and gpa boosting

its very clear in the NOA that they see the classes as impermissible benefits and that it was going on - in their eyes anyways from 2002 thru whatever the end date was - 2008? 2009?

as I said - the NCAA wrote this NOA so they had time to stick a finger in the air and see what the mood was across the country for punishment in regards to UNC. If there is outrage by the masses, I think they are going to hit them hard. If the masses indicate they will be satisfied with a post season ban and loss of scholarships, then that's what it will be.

UNC has refused to co-operate, has spent millions trying to control the PR on this and has already said they will fight the findings of the NCAA. They've done just about everything they can to piss the NCAA off and yet still, the NCAA is trying to give them a cushion.

Not sure where you're getting that UNC has refused to cooperate (other than Nyangoro and Crowder) because that's hardly the situation. The NCAA said point blank that UNC has done quite a bit to remedy its academic shortcomings. That was the main point of agreement if you've actually followed this case and not just picked up pieces from the UK boards.

Again, there's no real way of knowing what the NCAA will do but going after retroactive ineligibility doesn't seem feasible given what its constructed in its LOA.

I'm not a huge fan of Adam Gold but he wrote a pretty good piece on this whole deal that I pretty much agree with.

http://www.wralsportsfan.com/path-of-le ... /14692291/

I made my kid watch the Belmont today although he was pissed because I pulled him off Minecraft to do it. Maybe he'll remember one day watching a horse win the Triple Crown like I did watching Seattle Slew and Affirmed do it. That was a hell of a race by American Pharoah today and it just seemed from the time the post parade began, history was going to be made.

yea I'm not sure I've ever felt as confident that a horse was going to do it as I did on this one - and I'm not even sure why, I guess because the media really hyped it up.

This was good for horse racing. It probably won't reverse the slow death that its been on but it will keep it in the public eye for a bit longer now.

1973 versus 2015

I read the entire Adam Gold piece but here is where it gets hit with a huge fail

"Well of course it does. The "collegiate model" itself is a travesty, an outdated, antiquated notion that, much like the wife of Judge Smails in the movie Caddyshack, 'must have been great before electricity.'


no, the idea that everyone does it now, or the whole damn system is broke, has no bearing on this.

UK cheated, UK got caught, UK paid a heavy price.
Miami cheated, Miami got caught, Miami paid a heavy price
Memphis cheated (actually they didn't), Memphis got caught, Memphis paid a heavy price
Syracuse, UConn, Michigan, San Diego St, on and on

UNC cheated, UNC got caught - in the largest and longest academic/athletic scandal in NCAA History - UNC must pay a heavy price.

and worse, no one with UNC is denying they haven't cheated on a massive scale, yet still believe they should skate from the same level of punishment by scale or even instance the NCAA has handed out in the past.

That's the level of hubris that got them into this mess in the first place.

Well, if that's what got us into this, maybe it can get us out...

Nah, we're going to get some kind of ding, but I don't think it's going to be nearly as bad as the ABC'ers want. Of course, nothing short of the death penalty would satisfy some (most?) of them...

I predict that there will be a triple crown winner again next year. They come in bunches. 4 winners in the 1940's, then a dry spell until the 1970s where there were 3 winners.

Clearly causal. Good catch...

They still race horses for money? Is Michael Vick involved?

eCat wrote:I read the entire Adam Gold piece but here is where it gets hit with a huge fail

"Well of course it does. The "collegiate model" itself is a travesty, an outdated, antiquated notion that, much like the wife of Judge Smails in the movie Caddyshack, 'must have been great before electricity.'


no, the idea that everyone does it now, or the whole damn system is broke, has no bearing on this.

UK cheated, UK got caught, UK paid a heavy price.
Miami cheated, Miami got caught, Miami paid a heavy price
Memphis cheated (actually they didn't), Memphis got caught, Memphis paid a heavy price
Syracuse, UConn, Michigan, San Diego St, on and on

UNC cheated, UNC got caught - in the largest and longest academic/athletic scandal in NCAA History - UNC must pay a heavy price.

and worse, no one with UNC is denying they haven't cheated on a massive scale, yet still believe they should skate from the same level of punishment by scale or even instance the NCAA has handed out in the past.

That's the level of hubris that got them into this mess in the first place.

But they didn't cheat. They just set the bar extremely low within the rules. It's not much different than signing a class of freshmen every year and then relying on other people to keep your graduation rates legal. It's gigging the system without crossing the line.

Not really the way UNC has proclaimed it has done it for decades but it's not the same kind of cheating as most, if not all of those examples you've laid out. If it were, UNC would have already received its punishment.

Saint wrote:

eCat wrote:
But they didn't cheat. They just set the bar extremely low within the rules. It's not much different than signing a class of freshmen every year and then relying on other people to keep your graduation rates legal. It's gigging the system without crossing the line.

Not really the way UNC has proclaimed it has done it for decades but it's not the same kind of cheating as most, if not all of those examples you've laid out. If it were, UNC would have already received its punishment.

no Saint, you're completely wrong.

UNC did cheat. Period. Grades were given, papers were written - and this was done for athletes, not for the general population of students attending these classes.

What's even more amazing than your "but we didn't cheat" line of thinking is that you so readily throw the academic standard of UNC away in order to protect a single athletic program and more to the point - a single title earned in 2005.

When you "gig" the system , not for the entire student population , but at the expense of the entire student population in order to keep athletes eligible, it is cheating - its a benefit for the athlete- and worse, its the single monetary value that the NCAA does recognize as a form of payment for a player. UNC has essentially paid players for a no show position. Not only is this cheating at the athletic level, its fraud. Thats *nothing* like bringing in some ringers to keep the GPA high, oh as if you needed reminding , Alex Poythress a starter is an "A" student with a real major - something like accounting. Brandon Knight was taking college prep when he came in. But that's a different conversation - this "gigging" of the system was premeditated by UNC as an effort to skirt existing NCAA rules by focusing on the spirit of the rule and not the letter of the law. Thankfully, UNC employees must also be graduates because they are incompetent in actually reading the bylaws in determining what is deemed a benefit in the eyes of the NCAA.

UNC told the world they taught at a level of "X" , receiving funding from the state and federal government, SACS accreditation and handing out pell grants , etc based on meeting the expectations of teaching at level X, when in reality they did nothing close to that. That's fraud. Not only should UNC vacate titles, they should lose accreditation and be convicted of pell grant fraud. The pulled off the major feat of not only structuring classes to be a benefit to keep student athletes eligible, but also invalidated the education of other students sucked into that mess at the same time.

The only thing saving UNC at this point is the level of cheating and fraud is so massive, based on past NCAA punishments, there is no fit punishment for the crime other than leveling the university and starting over.

UNC is like the Pol Pot of University scandal, they have rules in place to deal with a murderer, or even a serial killer, but when you just go off the scale of what is known to humanity, they have no idea how to deal with it.

UNC knows it cheated, YOU know they cheated - and everyone who supports UNC is just trying to save a reputation that UNC chose to and intentionally risked in an effort to be competitive in football and basketball. If I were a UNC person, I couldn't with a straight face tell anyone that we didn't cheat we only "gigged" the systsem and would use some warped logic like comparing that to bringing players on who actually went to class and made good grades to raise the overall GPA of the team.

seriously man, that's Mecca level rationalization

"The only thing saving UNC at this point is the level of cheating and fraud is so massive, based on past NCAA punishments, there is no fit punishment for the crime other than leveling the university and starting over."

If what you are saying is true, you gotta at least appreciate the moxey involved...

Man, I got up at like 4:30 this morning, couldn't get back to sleep, so I went downstairs and turned on the TV. I hadn't watched the Cavs/Warriors game earlier in the evening, and they were replaying it, so I watched. It was already in the 4th quarter with the Cavs up like 10. It was the weirdest game and crowd I think I've ever seen, certainly in an NBA finals game. The crowd was almost completely silent, even when the Warriors made their run at the end of the game and even took a one point lead I think. Then the Cavs came down and somebody threw up a shot, missed and then this short, bearded little homunculus crashes the lane, gets the rebound and gets fouled while flailing a "shot" back up. It was like some weird comedy starring Zack Galifinackis, that's who this guy looked like. He made both FT's, but somehow the game went to overtime. Once again, the Cavs get a decent lead but the Warriors fight their way back into a tie and yet the crowd is still virtually silent. Lebron missing layups, getting his shots blocked, losing a jump ball (his stats were great over the whole game, but he certainly didn't take over the game in the 4th quarter or OT) and yet somehow the Cavs still won. The whole thing was just very odd...

On another note, JR Smith is awful. He might be a great shooter, but he had two awful fouls at the end of the game and OT that could've easily lost the game for the Cavs. They showed another similarly awful foul by him from earlier in the game as well. If the Cavs win this championship with this group of players, LeBron's legend goes to another level IMO. If they had Irving and Love at full strength, I think these games would've been blowouts...