The Florida State investigation

[Russ Smith]

I think this is going to be fascinating to see if the NCAA really goes after them hard to make an example of them. For those who didn't see it apparently FSU has had "tutors" who were writing papers for athletes particularly in online courses. Well it escalated when one of the tutors asked a regular student to take an online test for a course he wasn't in, taking the test for an athlete(who they claim was not aware someone was taking the test for him). The student reported it to his advisor who reported it and on up the ladder it went. There are now 23 athletes charged with academic fraud, none have been named, not even the sport they play(due to privacy laws).

2 "tutors" have resigned over this already, the school is currently claiming they were acting on their own, personally I doubt that. It's been reported that it was widely known on campus among athletes that this one tutor was doing this, he was apparently only tutoring in one class but that virtually every athlete facing cheating charges now took that class they were steered to do that by FSU the claim is. These were online courses and apparently many were done during the summer when there's less scrutiny on this sort of thing. FSU is attempting to determine if this was more widespread than they currently know, and if there was a systemic involvement, that is was the athletic department behind this or not? My understanding from what I read this morning is that many of the athletes named got his help before they were actually enrolled as students at Florida State, that is they used these courses to actually qualify for FSU. In effect they were athletes committed to FSU but not qualified who were taking online courses at the advice of FSU to get the core classes they needed to qualfiy.

Since that has become a real "trend" in college sports I think this is likely just the tip of the iceberg. I can think of at least one Pac 10 school that would immediately pop into my head as "hmm I wonder if all those kids qualifying in online courses are really doing their own work?" I guess we will USsee if anything happens on that front.

 

[Southpaw]

All involved football players will be required to run stadium steps after practice. Bobby will take care of things in house. Heh,heh.

 

[Russ Smith]

All involved football players will be required to run stadium steps after practice. Bobby will take care of things in house. Heh,heh.

Yep and I'm sure they're completely stunned to find out this was happening.

I always am amazed when people complain about what seems to be an overly harsh penalty by the NCAA on something like they don't realize all the nonsense that schools are pulling that the NCAA has to try and catch. I think a lot of times when we see a situation and think why is the NCAA being so draconian on that, it's because they know damn well there are other more severe violations going on there that they haven't yet caught?

And I guarantee FSU is far from the only team doing this, it's a fairly recent trend in college sports they went away from Juco's to using prepschools which were basically in many cases diploma mills. When the NCAA started cracking down on that a couple of years ago, in came the online courses and the summer courses. USC got caught last year sending a bunch of athletes to LA Trade Tech for summer classes. One of the more aggregious examples was a Spanish teacher who gave everyone in the class an A, she said she felt if they bothered to come to class in the summer with the nice sunny weather, that showed effort and deserved an A!

And I'm sure by the time the NCAA has closed down this loophole, the schools will have found another way to cheat the system.