We could have been at 70 scholarships last year, and it wouldn't factor into our future scholarship reductions.
Not true...
Miami has been working closely with the NCAA. The NCAA was told about the self imposed roster reduction and they will count it towards the final punishment. Golden is gonna Golden...
You speak with tremendous authority on the scholarship reduction aspect. Do you know with certainty that what you are saying is a fact because, admittedly, I'm not 100% certain on what I said? My comment was based on my own reading of the situation.
No, I'm not 100% certain. But if my man Golden says he's already been self imposing scholarship reduction then I choose to believe he's self imposed scholarship reduction and the NCAA has given the green light. I know Miami has been screwed by the NCAA in the past. I also know that the NCAA president came out and stated that Donna Shalala handled this investigation superbly and gave her glowing remarks. I also know that a conman who robbed millionaires out of a billion dollars and who is a heavyweight champion liar and thief conjured up complete BS to get the program in this mess. I also know that 12 players who were still on the team were investigated and only 9 were found to have received benefits to the tune of a measly $3500 and not a single one of them were kicked out of school completely. We're not talking about cars being bought and duffle bags stuffed with $250k here. We're talking about steak dinners, jerseys, and drinks on south beach. We're talking about typical recruiting type of ****. When all said and done I think Miami gets time served. Giving up 3 post season games, having a black cloud over the program for 2 years while the NCAA ran this witch hunt, and self imposing 5 scholarships a year for 2 years is enough for typical booster recruiting type of ****. I mean people aren't really going to tell us recruits aren't taken to steak dinners and given jerseys on these trips are they? The NCAA doesn't have ****. That's why they tried extorting information from former players because they know they don't have **** and Miami has self imposed tougher sanctions than they can even justify giving them with what little dirt they have.
I could be wrong but this is what I have gathered from this circus...
One thing we all tend to forget is the Pell Grant scandal. We had one of the worst examples of lack of institutional control ever in college football history and received a ONE YEAR BOWL BAN and scholarship reductions. There were 31 scholarship reductions and that's what really hurt.
We had Dan Morgan playing at Miami on an Academic Scholarship for christ's sake.
The Yahoo article suggests a lot of issue. I say suggest because very little has been proven. The biggest violation was the basketball one and the 10K payment and that was discounted and the player reinstated.
Let me give you a scenario: "in 1994, Tony Russell, a former UM academic advisor, pleaded guilty to helping more than 80 student athletes, 57 of whom were football players, falsify Pell Grant applications in exchange for kickbacks from the players themselves. The scandal dated all the way back to 1989 and secured more than $220,000 in federal grant money. Federal officials later said that Russell had engineered "perhaps the largest centralized fraud ... ever committed" in the history of the Pell Grant program.
In late 1995, the NCAA concluded that, in addition to the fraudulent Pell Grants facilitated by Russell, the university had also provided or allowed over $400,000 worth of other, improper payments to Miami football players. The NCAA also found that the university had failed to wholly implement its drug testing program, and permitted three football student-athletes to compete without being subject to the required disciplinary measures specified in the policy."
How we didn't get the death penalty over this scandal I don't know. I am and was ecstatic we got off so light.
The Pell grant scandal and the Uncle Luke issue compared to this current situation is like the Titanic compared to me capsizing a hobie cat on biscayne bay.
We've already gone above and beyond what we were punished with for the worst scandal in NCAA history.
We had a UM staffer organize federal fraud at unprecedented levels and 400K of admitted extra benefits and received a one year bowl ban and reductions.
We don't know what the NCAA can prove with the Shapiro investigation. What we do know is that we had something like 3500 in extra benefits, which are only extra benefits because the guy was a booster. We also have a number of players that were exonerated of any wrong doing including the 10K payment.
I'd bet anything that when all is said and done the amount of extra benefits comes nothing close to the 400K and pell grant fraud we were guilty of in the mid 90's, so how can the punishment be much worse or any worse?
Don't discount the 2 bowl bans we've self imposed. In foresight, hindsight and all sight, 2 bowl bans is a HUGE penalty and we self imposed it. We've already made contrition and fallen on our sword any more punishment is strictly done out of spite.