USC Sanctions: Football Team Banned From Postseason, Stripped Of National Title Win

UPDATE: The USC football team has been stripped of its 2004 national championship victory and must vacate its entire 2005 season, according to ESPN's Bruce Feldman.

Describing the NCAA sanctions, a school official said "we got killed" earlier in the day.

Click here for a PDF of the NCAA's infractions report.

EARLIER:

USC's football program has been banned from postseason play for two years and will lose more than 20 scholarships, the Los Angeles Times reports. ESPN's Bruce Feldman first tweeted about the sanctions Wednesday night.

School sources were "surprised at the severity and length of penalties," according to Bryan Fischer of USCFootball.com and Rivals. He also wrote that USC has 15 days to decide whether to appeal the sanctions.

It was reported Tuesday that the school could expect sanctions this week, and an article at USCFootball.com on Wednesday claimed that the university had received its NCAA infractions report.

In January, the University of Southern California imposed sanctions on its basketball team after its investigation concluded that the school violated NCAA rules while recruiting former Trojan and current Memphis Grizzly OJ Mayo.

On Thursday, HuffPost's Adam Rose appeared on ESPN's "Outside the Lines" to discuss the sanctions:

USC has been hit with a two-year post-season ban in addition to the loss of scholarships, among other penalties from the NCAA.less than a minute ago via webBruce Feldman
BFeldmanESPN

Comments

[argyle]

09:35 AM on 06/16/2010

Why are minor league football players not paid anyway? Why does the NFL get to use my University dollar to help fund its minor league system? Why has anyone ever had college paid for them, while others more qualified didn't, simply because they played a game well?

It's time the NFL stopped benefiting from socializing the cost of running a minor league system. It's time people went to school to learn.

[all4peace]

08:30 PM on 06/14/2010

Lane Kiffin is in the perfect place!!!

[mamacat]

09:43 PM on 06/13/2010

USC has a long history of immoral behavior. Most of Nixon's plumbers pals, the guys who committed the Watergate break-in and attempted the coverup, went to USC.

[jerryfromcalifornia]

04:40 PM on 06/13/2010

Tough sheet, cheaters never prosper.

[lawrence of america]

06:29 PM on 06/14/2010

Its only cheating when you get caught, if not its being savvvy

[imagecpr]

04:17 PM on 06/13/2010

The NCAA’s action against the USC Trojans sends a message to all major college athletic programs to check your egos at the door, be proactive about monitoring your student-athletes and follow the rules. The bottom line — if you don’t comply, you’ll lose millions of dollars.

Read more at www.imagecpr.com.

[Scott Zwartz]

03:16 PM on 06/13/2010

Obama should be 1/2 are tough on Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Oil and Wall Street.

[AntiSheep13]

01:53 PM on 06/13/2010

USC's arrogance is what caused the NCAA to drop the hammer on em.

[jagrmeister721]

08:04 PM on 06/12/2010

NO one will summarize WTF the sanctions are for.

[rjhuntington]

06:31 AM on 06/13/2010

Click the link in the article for the PDF. Here are some salient details from it:

====================================
The NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions has penalized the University of Southern California for violations in its football, men's basketball and women's tennis programs.

The violations span almost four years, primarily involving agent and amateurism issues for a former football student-athlete and a former men's basketball student-athlete. The committee noted that the violations in this case strike at the heart of the NCAA amateurism principal, which states that intercollegiate athletics should be motivated primarily by education and its benefits.

Regarding the individuals who triggered NCAA agent rules and the former student-athletes in this case, the committee stated, "Their actions also threatened the efforts of the NCAA and its member institutions to sponsor and support amateur competition at the collegiate level."

The findings in this case include a lack of institutional control, impermissible inducements, extra benefits, exceeding coach staff limits, and unethical conduct by an assistant football coach.
====================================

[orkt]

12:06 PM on 06/14/2010

I agree. This is really poor reporting. You don't put the underlying reason for an article in a footnote or a click-away; you must at least summarize it. And the question of who they beat in 2004 and whether or not they will be awarded the trophy retroactively is surely on most reader's minds: why not answer it?

[edgarcaycedoc]

07:17 PM on 06/12/2010

Perennial powers may not be good at anything except hiding their cunnery and stealing their talent very, very well.

[roudy]

12:54 PM on 06/12/2010

So, sports fans, does this now mean the second place team for that year is now retroactively the new national champion? How's that all work here?

[benhawkins]

06:57 PM on 06/12/2010

I believe the NCAA said this week that after they vacate USC's national title, they would not award it to anyone else. There simply would be no national champion at all for that year.

[roudy]

12:46 PM on 06/12/2010

If you applied the same standard to every college program then there would be no "national champions" left.

[MaeBayB]

05:00 AM on 06/13/2010

Agreed...this is soooo over the top for no apparent reason.

[mamacat]

09:44 PM on 06/13/2010

USC takes cheating to a whole new level.

[jalowe1957]

11:50 AM on 06/12/2010

USC is now stewing in its own hubristic juice. They could have stopped all that nonsense had they intervened when they should have. And now they are suffering the consequences of its absence of oversight and internal controls.

It doesn't take anecdotal hearsay accounts from disaffectionate former students to tell you how epidemic and endemic the corruption on the USC campus truly is, and how administrators turn a blind eye to all that is around them because they fear for their lucrative positions.

If their response to their woodshedding and public fanny-whacking by the NCAA is of any indication, they haven't gotten it, and they still don't get it.

And those who place institutional power, prerogatives, and its perceived reputation over ethics and the well-being of their students never have and never will.

[lawrence of america]

06:31 PM on 06/14/2010

thats sounds like a good name for a drink "hubristic Juice"

[pkafin]

05:47 AM on 06/12/2010

Would it have killed the author to mention what their punishment was for?

[bruinlover09]

12:48 AM on 06/12/2010

The best commentary on the scandal
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-0611-plaschke-usc-ncaa-20100611-9,0,458661.column

[Henny Bogan]

10:56 PM on 06/11/2010

Is it possible that you American's misunderstood and accepted what it means to be either criminal or illegal in this instance? Have you all accepted the ultimate authority of the NCAA without first thinking for yourselves? Who's making money? Are they righteous? Is there really amateur athletic purity in college sports? IMO the NCAA are a very large bunch of crooks, and having been an NCAA athlete in the past I know that my opinion is quite valid... Don't go asleep, America! These people are not as good or as pure as they claim to be. Nor are their victims(Reggie Bush et al.) anywhere near as criminal as they or the media would have you believe... and as or USC?!.... Really? This is such a sad rip off..... lets all take a deep breath adn grow the fook up!!

[cybolt]

01:40 AM on 06/12/2010

You're certainly not alone in your feelings there. The NCAA renders decisions that perpetuate their authority and control.

[MaeBayB]

05:28 AM on 06/13/2010

Agreed...I liken the NCAA to pimps....the fact that it took soooooo long to investigate alleged infractions that took place several years ago in 2004 is such a joke...The NCAA had no intention of sanctioning this program while Carrol was the coach, because it was way to financially beneficial to their (NCAA) own bottom line.....
BTW, these alleged findings have not changed my opinion of USC, Reggie, Carrol....it only confirms my opinion of the NCAA....
FIGHT ON SC...KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!