Notre Dame Must Vacate Wins In 2012 And 2013 For NCAA Violations
The NCAA Committee on Infractions handed down a stiff penalty to Notre Dame on Tuesday, recommending that the school vacate all football wins from the 2012 and 2013 seasons due to a former student athletic trainer’s misconduct.
Notre Dame said it discovered in 2014 what the former student trainer had done in years prior, which included writing papers for football players. The university lowered player grades retroactively and gave the athletes no credit.
An NCAA release said the Notre Dame trainer committed academic misconduct with two players and provided six others with impermissible academic benefits. One additional football player committed academic misconduct on his own.
The Irish went 12-0 in the 2012 regular season before losing to Alabama in the BCS National Championship Game. In 2013, Notre Dame went 9-4.
Notre Dame announced it will appeal the penalty.
“I was always hopeful that we wouldn’t be at this day,” Kelly said in his Tuesday press conference. “We did the right thing, I’m proud of support staff. I’m proud of the people that represented us at Notre Dame during this time. If doing the right thing means that you’ve got to put an asterisk next to these games, that’s fine with me.
“We still beat Oklahoma, we still beat Wake Forest, we still beat all those teams. So you can put an asterisk next to it. If that makes you feel better, then that’s fine with me.”
Five former Notre Dame football players — DaVaris Daniels, Eilar Hardy, Kendall Moore, KeiVarae Russell and Ishaq Williams — were suspended prior to the 2014 season for academic misconduct. The other four players implicated in the NCAA report are unknown.
Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly said he had “zero” culpability in the academic violations at Notre Dame and that the resources and support staff for academics has since been addressed and bolstered.
The vacation of wins, Kelly said, is an unprecedented penalty for a violation that was strictly “student-on-student cheating.” No coach, academic support staff personnel or faculty member was aware of misconduct, the coach explained.
“It’s never happened before in the history of the NCAA,” Kelly said. “The penalty has never been issued in this fashion before.
“Clearly when you hear about vacating wins, you think about lack of institutional control, you hear of clearly abuse within the university relative to extra benefits, things of that nature. When these don’t even come close to that, although you hear those things, you just never think it would happen.”
In the NCAA’s report, it states that: “The institution conceded at the expedited hearing that the former student athletic trainer was an institutional staff member under the bylaws in effect at that time. The former student athletic trainer was therefore governed by NCAA rules and acted with disregard to the training she received. She had special access to student-athletes by the very nature of her employment in the athletics department, although she had no responsibilities in academics or academic support. It is uncontested that she assisted members of the football team in a way that elevated their academic performance, which was then deemed eventually to invalidate their academic performance, which had retroactive eligibility implications.”
One of Notre Dame’s key problems with the NCAA’s recommendation is that it could’ve simply expelled Daniels, Hardy, Moore, Russell and Williams and not been subject to an NCAA probe. Notre Dame dismissed four of those five players (Daniels, Moore, Russell and Williams) during the investigation and allowed them to return to school and graduate. Russell and Williams returned and got their degrees.
The NCAA panel also ordered one year of probation, a two-year show-cause order and disassociation for the athletic trainer, and a $5,000 fine for the university.
Kelly said he knew the vacation of wins penalty was a possibility when he traveled to meet with the NCAA in Indianapolis a few months ago. Kelly represented the university alongside athletic director Jack Swarbrick, Notre Dame president Rev. John I. Jenkins, and the university’s vice president and general counsel Marianne Corr.
“I knew it was a possibility, but you’re hoping that reasonable people would come to a reasonable decision, and obviously that didn’t get to the point that we’re at today,” Kelly said.
Kelly, who has had his own problems on the field during a losing season, said he has no reason to believe he won’t be the head coach at Notre Dame in 2017.
“This matter … has nothing to do with me and my status here,” Kelly said. “This academic piece probably strengthens what I’ve been doing relative to advocating for our student-athletes and the support staff necessary for them to be successful.
“So this obviously has been something that’s been going on for a few years. The announcement that comes out today has nothing to do with lack or additional support for Brian Kelly. Any negative criticism that’s out there about me right now is because we’re 4-7. It has nothing to do with the public announcement that came out here today.”
The following is a university statement from Jenkins:
“We very much appreciate the hard work of the NCAA enforcement staff and the members of the Committee on Infractions for their review of our case, but we believe the penalty they have imposed is not justified.
“We are disappointed in the actions of students who engaged in dishonesty, but we are gratified that the NCAA investigation confirmed the conclusions of our own internal investigation: Notre Dame acted honorably throughout. As soon as professional staff suspected academic dishonesty on the part of a student, the matter was reported promptly, investigated aggressively and thoroughly and adjudicated in accord with our Academic Code of Honor procedures and norms. In this case, everyone involved — those in Academic Services for Student-Athletes, in our football program and in our Compliance Office — and the faculty and students resolving these cases under our Honor Code did everything that we could have asked of them.
“We disagree with the decision of the hearing panel to impose, at its own discretion, a vacation of records penalty. In past academic misconduct cases, the Committee on Infractions has imposed this penalty only when it has found serious institutional misconduct, such as actions with the direct involvement or knowledge of a coach or academic personnel, a failure to monitor or a lack of institutional control. The NCAA enforcement staff and the hearing panel agreed with Notre Dame that no such institutional misconduct occurred in this case. Indeed, the only reason the NCAA reviewed the matter was because the misconduct involved a former fellow student who happened to participate in the university’s student trainer program — an activity which involved no responsibility for the academic work of student-athletes.
“We believe that imposition of the vacation of records penalty without serious underlying institutional misconduct will not primarily punish those responsible for the misconduct, but rather will punish coaches, student-athletes and indeed the entire institution who did nothing wrong and, with regard to this case, did everything right. We are also concerned that establishing this precedent will infringe on universities’ autonomy in deterring academic dishonesty, for it will discourage the retroactive lowering of grades even when an honor code committee deems this appropriate.
“As we said at the outset of this investigation, Notre Dame would willingly accept a vacation of records penalty if it were appropriate. It is not in this case. Indeed, should this precedent stand, it could create a perverse incentive that will discourage institutions from investigating so aggressively and imposing the penalties for academic dishonesty that their honesty committees might judge appropriate.”