Missouri gets screwed by the NCAA
There was no other headline than this: Missouri got screwed by the NCAA.
Despite self-reporting academic cheating to the NCAA because of an academic tutor doing academic work for “12 student athletes”, including completing online coursework that “included assignments, quizzes or exams”. The NCAA added: “She completed an entire course for one student-athlete and completed portions of a placement exam for two student-athletes.”
Mizzou was thumped with a bowl ban, three years of probation, a vacation of records in which football, baseball and softball student-athletes competed while ineligible, a 5% reduction in the amount of scholarships in each of the football, baseball and softball programs during the 2019-20 academic year, recruiting restrictions which included a seven-week ban on unofficial visits, a 12.5% reduction in unofficial visits, a seven-week ban on recruiting communications, a seven-week ban on all off-campus recruiting contacts and evaluations, and a 12.5% reduction in recruiting in-person or valuation days.
Missouri appealed, and the NCAA turned it down.
The school was outraged, and put out this statement. “We are deeply disappointed and appalled by the NCAA Infractions Appeals Committee’s decision to shirk its responsibilities and simply uphold sanctions that are not consistent with precedent or even common sense.
Despite this frustrating and disappointing outcome, the University of Missouri and Mizzou Athletics will continue to stand for integrity, and we will become stronger despite the challenges we are faced with today. We have outstanding student-athletes in all three affected programs and they are building something special here at Mizzou
Today’s decision raises serious questions about whether the current NCAA enforcement system encourages or discourages cultures of compliance and integrity. While we have exhausted our NCAA appeal avenues, we will continue to advocate for meaningful reform within the NCAA enforcement process.
Today, about 180 student-athletes who had nothing to do with the actions of one rogue part-time employee will pay a steep price. NCAA enforcement officials noted that prior to the violation the university employed a robust institutional system to ensure rules compliance. Once the problem was known, we self-reported immediately, held individuals accountable and cooperated with the investigation in what NCAA officials described as “exemplary” fashion.
Meanwhile, a recent case involving Mississippi State University with similar circumstances as Mizzou’s yielded a very different result. MSU, like us, acted with the highest integrity. MSU’s case followed a new NCAA process that was not available to us and resulted in an outcome that, we believe, was more reasonable given the circumstances. The inconsistency of these decisions make it difficult for anyone to comprehend how Mizzou could receive such harsh sanctions.
In its decision on our case, the appeals committee wrote that a greater discussion and a better process is needed. We could not agree more.
It wrote: “This committee believes it is critical for the NCAA membership to discuss and evaluate the application, assessment and precedential value of infractions cases not only when parties agree on mitigating and aggravating factors, but also the appropriate precedential value and approach for cases in the entirety of the infractions processes. Doing so would better equip this committee and the Committee on Infractions in discharging its duties, and in turn improve the infractions process and yield better guidance for the membership as a whole.”
We strongly disagree that the appeals committee did not have the power to correct this mistake. The point of this process was not to use a formula to reach a conclusion, but to bring the benefit of consideration and judgement to achieve consistency with its final decision.“