True crime is my favorite genre, whether it be TV, books, or personal experience (just kidding!). So I know a thing or two about investigations. This is what happens:
Criminal: I didn't do it.
Cop: We think you did…we're going to be watching you over the next few weeks.
Criminal becomes paranoid/might turn himself in over the next few weeks. In the meantime, cops process DNA. If criminal turns himself in, case closed. If he doesn't, cop calls him in for a second interview:
Cop: We found your DNA at the scene. Can you explain why your DNA was at the scene?
Criminal: You didn't find my DNA.
Cop (*pulls out test results*): Look, we found your DNA.
Criminal finally caves in. Admits to the crime and becomes completely compliant thinking that showing a "human side" will reduce their sentence come judgment day. Criminal accepts fate, and is just grateful the cop doesn't know about the 20 bodies over State lines.
Well, the Oregon Ducks are that criminal.
How many times did we hear the AD says they didn't do anything wrong?
Now?
"We did something wrong, but we're going to show our human side and 'self report' the violations."
Via:
“We are in constructive negotiations with the NCAA on the draft of their proposed findings.”
This, folks, is a plea bargain. The Ducks are just glad the NCAA doesn't have the manpower or desire to investigate the 20 bodies across State lines, also known as the drug issues, memorabilia issues, and 1/5th of the basketball team. So in American justice terms, we're probably looking at 20 years to life instead of the death penalty. My guess is they will have to vacate wins (possibly the Rose Bowl victory) and face minor scholarship reductions. Moving forward, I don't think they'll get hit with any bowl bans.
haha I was thinking that too regarding the plea bargain. Pretty much the same thing a criminal would do to avoid the death penalty. idiots. hopefully this less severe punishment will include cock meat sandwiches for all involved!
were you the one that said earlier this football season that the Beavs looked like they were surprised to be playing football? I still laugh about that one lol. ;)
oh yeah haha that was me. thanks :)
It remains to be seen what cards the NCAA is holding, so far we’ve only seen the ducks plea deal but what we don’t know is how realistic that plea is in comparison the what the NCAA is investigating or planning to charge them. So from that prospective there is still hope for my fellow duck haters to see them get hammered. Obviously the ducks are not going to agree to everything, just the stuff they don’t think they can duck.
Myself, I’m not a proponent of the death penalty for them. I want them around so we can beat them. I would give them a reduced sentace of sorts, just a five year bowl ban reduction of 20 schollies for eight years, show clause for Kelly and PK. vacating wins is pointless in my opinion. Just a fair low level penalties for them. ; ) oh and disassociation for Knight and Kilkenny from the for program ten years. Maybe a free transfer pass to other in-state schools.
Vacating wins is a big deal in terms of prestige and winning %, especially the Rose Bowl victory. Those things matter to recruits and national audience. Ducks winning % is over 90% under Kelly. It would be huge to lose that. Also keep in mind they are repeat offenders (last violation was 2004, within the 5-year period).
I suppose it might give them a bit of a black eye on the books, but I’m more interested in how the penalties will hurt them going forward.
I would sort of look at this release as just the beginning of our crime book- with more entertainment to follow, allowing me to hope that the villians get their just deserves.
also I’m told that there is no previous track record regarding the scouting services so any guesses even on the portion that the ducks have agreement is pretty much a wild guess.
though my guess is they get off with less than the penalties I would impose.
Concerning true crime stories, my wife was watching so much “Snapped” that I was starting to get worried.
I dont see the voiding of past wins as as big a deal as future sanctions, like bowl bans, scholarship limitations, and the firing of the head coach. If you just do stuff in the past, they have already reaped the prestige harvest, and will be as strong as ever, going ahead. By itself, thats no real sanction.
And…what have we seen so far, as NCAA findings? Just what the ducks leaked out, right?. They may be presenting it in a better light than it actually is.
I think it is fairly serious, or they wouldnt bother to try to work with the NCAA on the potential sanctions. That is, if this were just slap on the wrist time, no need to bargain.
My big concern….since it appears the head coach was directly involved, can he be retained? Losing Kelley would be a big blow, just by itself, I think.
Kelley can be contained, but Universities usually fire the coach to save face. Doubt the Ducks will since everyone was involved, and he’s so prized. They’ll make up some “gray area” excuse to save face.
I think the vacated wins/prestige thing is a big deal. An unrecognized Rose Bowl and subtracting 90%+ winning percentage knocks the Ducks down to a mid-tier program. Yes, they’ve reaped rewards in that they’ll be in recruits’ minds due to recent success, but the scandal and “dirty program” label should offset that somewhat.
They’ll likely be hit with more than vacated wins.
I still dont see the vacated wins being anything more than a blow to fans, or to the school’s athletic history.. The players had the fun and excitement of winning a bowl game, and its only on paper that it is now a loss. In recruiting you can still say you won the Rose Bowl, and the recruits know you did…..they watched you do it.
So to me, real sanctions are what happens in the future. The real reason to vacate wins, is for the use of players illegally recruited and therefore inelligable. So the NCAA has to do that.
The future is the real penalty, to me.
Subscribing
If the recruiting violations extend as far back as rumored, they may have to vacate all games that include games that Thomas/James. That could mean vacating every game Kelly has ever coached in…
That would sure piss off the superego fans.
It sure would, it would also mean that we were the de facto conference champions that year and rightfully should’ve gone to the RB.
I wonder how much impact this is really going have if the penalties are focused on taking things away. Probably not much. The penalties for future recruiting limitations and bowl bans would seem to be of greater impact. 95% of the sports fans have already forgotten or don’t care about the USC, Ohio State, or North Carolina sanctions. And USC fans have never stopped saying that they won all those games on the field and that is what counts.
Seems to me that vacating the wins isn’t much a of a punishment at all, if anything it merely sets the record straight as those wins may not have come had they ‘played within the rules.’ In order to set the record straight you erase the wins. While that doesn’t effect the quack program going forward, high school players still see the cash, free kicks, AND the wins despite being technically vacated by the NCAA.
The punishment should be reduction of scholarships and bowl ban for (2-3) years. That ‘teaches’ UO a lesson and gives warning to other schools not to employ the same slimy tactics.
I think the punishment should be even stiffer than that.
Mark Emmert may want to fry them.
I have been skeptical that the Ducks would be hit, the only reason for optimism is that Mark Emmert is the NCAA president and is on record as not liking the Ducks.
No other way to put this: SCOTT RUECK, You are indeed THE MAN!!!!!!!
He’s a man among women!
(joking, but literally.)
Testing
Cats
So nothing big then?
It is far-fetched to hope for vacated wins AND a one year bowl ban? Also, I guess I am going to have to start following women’s hoops, it’s a great story and a Rueck is a star on the rise. I wonder if Corvallis can keep him?
I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Most schools don’t think highly enough of the women’s b-ball program to buy a current coach out of a contract. That’s why you see more assistants and lower level coaches moving up. Rueck is a Beaver alum and his track record at George Fox speaks as someone who wants to build up a strong, lasting program.
Does the Pac-12 conference have the ability to levy additional punitive actions? Not that I think they would, but they should. By cheating, and potentially vacating a rose bowl victory, the Ducks robbed legitimate Pac programs of a shot at the Rose Bowl and the opportunity to honorably represent the conference and win.
Imagine if Stanford was in the last Rose Bowl (and I think they matched up well with Wisconsin), Stanford wins, Luck is the first pick in the draft, etc. It looks great for the conference.
The Ducks deserve treatment that hurts, meaning, i think, banning from television. Those Nike girls at UO are ALL about exposure and marketing.
Back to reality….
Only downer about a duck tv ban, the CW would also be banned event…
Come on folks, is this a Duck board? There are some interesting Beaver topics to discuss… and I’m surprised to see that a few things have gone unmentioned.
First: That 444 fiasco of 10 days ago? Looks like the athletic department fixed it. I got an email last week, and the pricing has been corrected to include all processing fees. Let’s give the department some cred for responding to complaints!
Second: I’m glad that a few people noticed the Civil War victory today! Rueck is doing a tremendous job. That team plays tough and won’t quit. Fun to watch. Hard to believe they were a unanimous last place pick in the conference. Now they are tied for 4th, with a slim shot for a first round bye in the Pac 12 tourney, and a real chance for postseason play.
Third: Gymnastics team is putting together another solid season. After a pretty good score against Boise State yesterday, the match at Utah next week will be huge for their national rankings, not to mention their standing against UCLA and Utah.
And finally, good luck to the wrestling team and the men’s basketball team tomorrow!
We all hold hope for our teams. We actually want and expect more from them.
What you point to are all good things. But the first two words in the title of this post probably answers your first sentence/question.
Perhaps you can find a relative post to complain?
OT but Larry Scott is putting Riley’s future bowl trips in jeopardy:
“In terms of the college postseason in general, Scott said that he favored bowl teams having to finish better than 6-6 and perhaps having fewer bowl games. With 35 bowls now, the lower-tier bowls often scramble to fill slots.
“We need to get away from the societal trend of everyone getting a trophy,” he said”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/sports/ncaafootball/considering-a-playoff-format-that-would-scrap-the-bcs.html?_r=3&ref=sports
We also need to hold a conference commissioner accountable that tried to steal away Texas from another conference which then created a bidding war that has hurt every small market team in the country. Texas was able to parlay the bidding war to get special treatment (monetary advantage) from its conference. Larry Scott looks good now because he has increased revenue dramatically for the PAC-12. Twenty years from now he will be seen as a greedy elitist whose shaky ethics helped exacerbate a competitiveness crisis within the sport.
mattb,
Totally disagree with you on competitiveness. The TV deal will help out OSU and WSU much more than anything else. We were falling behind in TV revenue the last few years and now we will be pretty much on par.
The differentiator going forward will be what we do that money. If we hire the right coaches and do the right marketing then we will be as competitive as any school in the conference.
There is nothing wrong with money and nothing wrong with the great contract that Scott negotiated. It does not however, completely outweigh the bad. Look, Mike Slive of the SEC, who is no saint, has lobbied hard for a national championship and last year went against a vote of his coaches to limit the number of scholarships that an SEC football team could offer each year. At least some of the time he tries to do what is right. Where was Scott on the Oregon issue or any other ethical issue facing the conference? If Scott were truly interested in his PAC 12 members, he would use is bully pulpit and ability to negotiate contracts to set standards for the lower tier bowl games that rip off schools and alumni. If these bowls had to guarantee that each participating school was required to at least break even, as a trade off for exploiting their services, then many of these games would simply disappear and there would be no talk about 6-6 teams going to bowls. Scott is a pr machine for himself. Does the good he brings to the table outweigh his baggage? I do not know. But the more I learn of him, the more he seems to me to be like the hucksters from Goldman Sachs. PS, how does Iowa State and Kansas State getting screwed out of an equal share of the pie enhance competition? How does making kids go half way across the country every other week to play in two venues and miss huge amounts of class time, enhance the quality of education? How does this help the competitive ability of our nation when we are getting our butts kicked in classroom competition with most industrialized nations?
Not sure what Larry Scott has to do with the national educational quality…
I think you are just sore that the times are changing and that the “old” way of doing things is slowly fading, especially under Scott’s leadership. While he might have “started” the arms race in college football, that was something that had already been building to the breaking point. Scott just offered to fire the first shot across the bow. Personally, I am happy that he took the shot because it advanced our conference’s standing.
Now, if you want to stand up and defend Slive’s SEC and the Big 12, then you clearly aren’t educated on all of the facts. The PAC is not innocent here but neither are they the villains.
Maybe you are right. But I do not think that we should live in a static past . I believe that Tom Hansen should have been encouraged to leave long before he did. The gig that Larry Scott got was ripe for change and anyone of a hundred different candidates would have recognized this and been able to convert this to cash for all members. Angry was/is much more eloquent than I in describing the PAC-12 Commissioner.
Angry is absolutely right. Scott is “that guy”.
Question is, what was the alternative? The PAC has been lagging behind in its image and Scott is doing everything he can to rectify that issue. Unfortunately, we have contributed to an arms race that will kill everything that we love about college sports.
Just like society has gotten too far ahead of itself at the expense of a credit bubble, so too has college football [gotten too far ahead of itself]. The desire for growth, whether it be higher TV contracts or inflated GDP, is taking the essence out of good things. Like society/economics, the alternative for NCAA football was to cut back and enjoy quality over quantity. The current product isn’t as good, and natural forces are stronger than executives’ desires, so the NCAA’s path (to become the WFF??) will one day reboot. I don’t expect it in our lifetime. “Pay for play” will play out (pardon the pun) because that’s the next arms race, and that will further disintegrate the sport. It’s all going to take time.
PS. Part of the reason I dislike Scott is his inability to foresee that 22mil per school = “pay for play”…it’ll start as a “stipend”, and progress into salary/free agents. There will be the shills out there crying how players are exploited (free education, shot at NFL /= exploitation, but okay!). This talk will accelerate as the NCAA loses credibility.
What;s the line for the CW?
James did poorly at combine. If pro career isn’t in cards,he’d be a great OSU recruiter and coach someday.
Wow, Burfict imploding…
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/tony_pauline/02/27/combine-linebackers/index.html?sct=nfl_t2_a4
Couldn’t break 5 seconds?