In a case that it says strikes at the heart of the principle of amateurism in college sports, the National Collegiate Athletic Association handed out its stiffest penalties in decades on Thursday to the University of Southern California for rules violations in its football and men’s basketball programs.
The sanctions include a postseason ban on competition for both sports—two years for football, one year for basketball—and significant reductions in scholarships for both elite programs. The NCAA announced the penalties and the findings of its investigative panel Thursday afternoon after news reports of the sanctions surfaced late Wednesday night.
The decision is the latest twist in a saga that, over the past four years, has exposed the ultracompetitive world of big-time college football and basketball recruiting—and the difficulty that college-sports’ governing body has had in policing it.
The case centered on the actions of two former Southern California athletes, the football player Reggie Bush, a winner of the Heisman Trophy, and the basketball star O.J. Mayo. The athletes, both of whom now play in the professional leagues, were accused of accepting cash and other gifts from sports agents in violation of NCAA regulations.
The NCAA said the university, meanwhile, was lax in its oversight of its coaching staff in the football and men’s basketball programs and the overall environment in the athletics department. For this reason, it imposed a four-year probation on the Trojans’ entire athletics program for a lack of institutional control.
Steven B. Sample, Southern California’s president, said in a two-page letter to the university community that the institution accepted some of the NCAA’s findings but would appeal those that it considers “excessive.” (The statement did not specify which penalties would be appealed.)
Paul T. Dee, chairman of the Division I Committee on Infractions, which investigated the case, said it illustrated the need for greater oversight of blue-chip recruits and players, and the recruiting tactics coaches use to land them.
“If somebody was a fourth-round draft pick, none of this would have happened,” Mr. Dee said to reporters during a teleconference Thursday afternoon, referring to the university’s alleged lack of attention to the misconduct. “If a program has high-profile players, enforcement staff has to monitor those students at a higher level.”
A Cautionary Tale
Many observers had speculated that the NCAA might levy forceful penalties on the university to send a clear message to other colleges that push the limits of NCAA rules. Mr. Dee declined to disclose Thursday whether that was the case, but he did say that the committee had been deliberate in publicizing its consideration of banning the university from television appearances—a penalty considered to be one of the most-severe in the NCAA’s arsenal.
Ultimately, the committee decided not to impose the broadcast ban. Still, “we felt it was important to discuss that publicly,” Mr. Dee said. “We want people to understand ... that this penalty is available, and whenever someone breaks a rule, there are consequences.”
Glenn Wong, a professor of sport management at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who has studied the NCAA’s enforcement and infractions policies in detail, said Thursday’s penalties were “very significant and severe.” Short of the television ban and a complete ban on competition—a punishment known as the “death penalty,” last imposed on a major sport in the mid-1980s, against Southern Methodist University—the sanctions were the toughest the association could impose, he said.
But as sobering as the sanctions may be for Southern California, Mr. Wong said, they could, and maybe should, have been worse.
“The penalty fits the information that the Committee on Infractions had in front of it, but it may not fit what actually might have happened. But it can’t, if they don’t have the evidence,” he said. “Even with a smoking gun, [the committee] had trouble with this case.”
The NCAA has no authority to subpoena individuals it suspects are involved in a case. The inability to compel athletes, coaches, administrators, and others to testify often prevents the association from gathering critical evidence and can make a case drag on for years, Mr. Wong said. It is a problem in many infractions cases, not just those involving star athletes, he added.
In the Southern California case, for instance, the NCAA said neither of the athletes in question cooperated with the investigation. And a related civil lawsuit that could have brought to light key evidence in the case recently settled out of court without the disclosure of the court record.
The NCAA acknowledged Thursday the difficulty of mounting a case without subpoena power. In the 67-page report, it said the enforcement and infractions processes are only one way for it to “police and sanction” rules violations.
“These processes are often slow,” the report says. “The limited scope of authority also means that these processes are, at times, incomplete.”
But the association also had stern words for Southern California and other major players in college sports, which it said were responsible for keeping closer watch on their athletics programs, especially the marquee sports.
“Universities may not hide their heads in the sand and purport to treat all programs and student-athletes similarly when it comes to the level of scrutiny required,” the report says. “NCAA members, including USC, invest substantial resources to compete in athletics competition at the highest levels, particularly in football and men’s basketball. They must commit comparable resources to detect violations and monitor conduct.”
In an imperfect enforcement process that cannot catch every rule-breaker, and whose penalties often come years after the individuals involved have moved on, a dilemma remains, Mr. Wong said. Do the sanctions against Southern California chasten athletics programs that push the envelope to get ahead, or does the incomplete nature of the infractions process embolden them further still? “That’s the million-dollar question,” he said.
