Notre Dame must vacate perfect season after losing NCAA appeal
A student athletic trainer who completed academic assignments for three members of Notre Dame’s football program in 2012 and 2013 has, in essence, cost the university it’s undefeated 2012 regular season.
An NCAA Committee on Infractions announced Tuesday it has rejected an appeal by Notre Dame to vacate all 21 victories by the football program from the 2012 and 2013 seasons.
The original decision to vacate the wins was handed down in November. The university appealed, and the result of the appeal was announced Tuesday.
The panel also ordered one year of probation and a $5,000 fine for the university.
A former Notre Dame student athletic trainer — whom the NCAA only identified as a female — was found to have violated NCAA ethical conduct rules when she committed academic misconduct for two football players and provided six other football players with impermissible academic extra benefits.
All the infractions were self-reported by Notre Dame.
The university suspended five players prior to the 2014 season for academic misconduct related to the case. The others left the school.
Of those players, three had played during the 2012 and 2013 seasons.
In 2012, Notre Dame went 12-0 in the regular season before losing to Alabama in the BCS national championship. The school won nine games the following season.
The ruling drops the Fighting Irish’s all-time winning percentage from .729 to .727 and its all-time win total from 906 to 885.
Father John Jenkins, Notre Dame’s president, said he was “deeply disappointed” by the NCAA’s decision.
“We are deeply disappointed by and strongly disagree with the denial of the university’s appeal,” Jenkins wrote in a letter responding to the NCAA’s decision. “Our concerns go beyond the particulars of our case and the record of two football seasons to the academic autonomy of our institutions, the integrity of college athletics and the ability of the NCAA to achieve its fundamental purpose.”
In a separate letter to the school’s alumni, Jenkins criticized the punishment.
“To impose a severe penalty for this retroactive ineligibility establishes a dangerous precedent and turns the seminal concept of academic autonomy on its head,” he wrote. “At best, the NCAA’s decision in this case creates a randomness of outcome based solely on how an institution chooses to define its honor code; at worst, it creates an incentive for colleges and universities to change their honor codes to avoid sanctions like that imposed here.”
In its appeal, the university claimed it was not involved in the fraud and the student trainer should not be considered the institutional representative of Notre Dame.
“In every other case in the record — meticulously detailed in the university’s arguments — the institutional representative of the university was employed as an administrator, coach, or person who served in an academic role,” Jenkins wrote. “The committee simply failed to provide any rationale why it viewed the student-worker as an institutional representative in our case.”
Notre Dame football coach Brian Kelly had a similar view, calling it “student-on-student cheating.”
The NCAA had a simple response.
“The appeals committee confirmed that at the time of the violations, the athletic training student was considered a university employee under NCAA rules,” NCAA spokeswoman Emily James said.
However, Jenkins pointed out that in 2016, NCAA member institutions amended the academic rules to make clear that student-trainers would not be considered institutional representatives.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
