By Michael Casagrande
sports@timesfreepress.com
More than four years after it began, the University of Alabama's student-athlete textbook scandal met its end Tuesday morning.
The NCAA Infractions Appeals Committee denied the school's final appeal of the punishment handed down last summer. It upheld the vacation of records from violation programs, most notably 21 football wins from the 2005-07 seasons. NCAA rules allow for no further appeals, so the wrangling is over after a lengthy battle.
In the end, the appeals committee did not agree with the crux of UA's argument against rewriting the Crimson Tide record book. Vacating the records, Alabama argued, was excessive enough "to constitute an abuse of discretion," considering the school's cooperation in the investigation and in light of penalties stemming from other schools' textbook cases.
The NCAA, however, disagreed. Its report said the Alabama case did not meet the standard established in one involving Alabama State in 2009.
Tuesday's ruling addressed both major concerns raised by the university.
"In its affirmation of the penalty, the Infractions Appeals Committee disagreed," a news release from the NCAA stated. "It noted that the Committee on Infractions mentioned several times in the public report that it had considered the university's cooperation. Further, when discussing the role of case precedent in penalty decisions, the Infractions Appeals Committee noted that two cases are seldom exactly alike and that the Committee on Infractions must have latitude to tailor the penalties to the specific facts of each case."
The official report noted "significant aggravating factors" that set Alabama's case apart, including the school's repeat offender status. The athletic department was on probation at the time of the offenses.
Soon after the NCAA released its ruling Tuesday morning, school president Robert Witt expressed his disappointment.
"The Appeals Committee acknowledged that their decision in our case is not consistent with the NCAA's prior textbook and vacation-of-wins cases, which was the heart of UA's appeal," Witt said in a university release. "Despite that acknowledgement, however, the Appeals Committee did not find an abuse of discretion. We are disappointed by the committee's inconsistent decision given the negative impact the decision has on hundreds of uninvolved student-athletes and their coaches."
Athletic director Mal Moore said the appeals committee "missed an excellent opportunity to follow its precedent set in recent cases, the precedent we followed due to the nature of the case."
The appeals process resolved Tuesday began June 11, 2009, after the infractions committee levied the penalties stemming from UA's student-athlete textbook distribution process.
The complex case involved 201 student-athletes separated into two groups: 16 who knowingly violated rules and 185 who did so unknowingly. Those who knew purposefully violated the rules included seven football players who used scholarship benefits to obtain textbooks and other academic materials for friends from the school bookstore. After two years of violations, the issue was uncovered in the fall of 2007. Offending players were immediately suspended but not before participating in the 21 wins now vacated.
After the investigation, the school said all extra benefits were repaid, but the damage was already done.
Vacated football wins2005: Middle Tennessee, Southern Mississippi, South Carolina, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, Utah State, Mississippi State and Texas Tech (Cotton Bowl).2006: Hawaii, Vanderbilt, Louisiana-Monroe, Duke, Mississippi and Florida International.2007: Western Carolina, Vanderbilt, Arkansas, Houston, and Mississippi.
Finding that Alabama provided impermissible benefits to the athletes while failing to monitor the process, the original ruling included a fine of $43,900, three additional years of probation running through June 10, 2012, and the vacating of records. Nine days after the penalties were made public,
Alabama announced it would appeal only the vacated records that also included individual and team results from violating men's and women's track athletes and men's tennis players.
Alabama must now take the eraser to some of its history. The wins were allowed to stay on the books during the appeals process but now must be removed for good.
The school now can celebrate the football program's 800th win twice. Officially, the Tide have 792 wins after subtracting the 21 vacated victories. Although muted in anticipation of the possible denial of the appeal, the school celebrated last season's 34-24 win over Virginia Tech as the program's 800th.
Without the 21 wins, including the 2005 Cotton Bowl, Alabama slips from fifth to seventh on the all-time wins list, allowing Penn State (812) and Oklahoma (796) to leapfrog the Tide.