The said

Of course, if they have to vacate the win, would they have to vacate that ignominious record-setting performance, too?

Absolutely…can't do it with an "illegal" team on the field…

Bytor said

What jumps out at me is that FIU got another four years of probation, their current probation period was suppose to end in '08, now extended till '12.

They were on probation for holding "supervised" practices in the off season when none were allowed.

Of course, if they have to vacate the win, would they have to vacate that ignominious record-setting performance, too?

Here is a paragraph from the article:


The university will vacate all wins in which the 45 student-athletes competed while ineligible, including participation in any NCAA championship. The individual records of the ineligible student-athletes will be vacated as well, including any records accumulated during championship competition. Further, the university's records regarding each affected sport, as well as the record of the former head coaches in those sports, will reflect the vacated records and be recorded in all records publications including, but not limited to, university media guides, recruiting material and university and NCAA archives. Any public reference to tournament performances or individual championships won during this time will be removed, including, but not limited to, athletics department stationery and banners displayed in public areas such as the arenas in which the affected teams compete. Finally, any championship awards shall be returned to the NCAA national office.


If any of those interceptions were made by ineligible players, they will be "vacated" is the way I read it. 

Awww…to bad this couldn't have continued into this last year.  They would still have the longest losing streak in the country.  And we wouldn't be claiming the win, we just wouldn't have lost ;D.  Now we could claim that we are undefeated in the shula bowl.  The thing that is pissing me off though is there still isn't any announcement on which games they have to forfeit.

lngbrdr said

Awww…to bad this couldn't have continued into this last year.  They would still have the longest losing streak in the country.  And we wouldn't be claiming the win, we just wouldn't have lost ;D.  Now we could claim that we are undefeated in the shula bowl.  The thing that is pissing me off though is there still isn't any announcement on which games they have to forfeit.

Just to clarify, they're not forfeits – they're vacating the wins.  The way I understand it, the wins won't be recorded as wins or losses.  The losses still count though.  Just like Oklahoma.

Here is an article form Murfreesboro: The Daily News Journal on this.

Hale: Sun Belt's image hurt by FIU


For some reason the link no longer works (as a few others from the Daily News  ???) so I posted the artilce below.


Hale: Sun Belt's image hurt by FIU
By MONTE HALE Jr.
[email protected]

Florida International, the last football-playing member in the Sun Belt Conference to join the Division I-A ranks, apparently wasn't ready to make the jump — at least from a legal standpoint.

FIU's athletic department was slapped with four years probation Wednesday for using ineligible student athletes, misapplying enrollment and financial aid rules, transfer requirements and eligibility rules.

In all, FIU used more than 40 ineligible student-athletes from the 2002-03 through the 2006-07 seasons.

Good thing the same NCAA investigators that poked around MTSU men's basketball program back in the early 1990s weren't around to delve into FIU's mess.

If you remember, the Blue Raiders lost scholarships, only the head coach could recruit on the road, and the program was banned from postseason play for two years for breaking several NCAA rules.

FIU received no postseason bans, but it lost more than 20 scholarships in football, basketball, baseball and soccer. The university has already absorbed most of those scholarship hits.

What was going on at FIU during those years is anyone's guess.

The opinion here is the Sun Belt Conference and FIU hastened the move to Division I-A football so the league would meet NCAA criteria for fielding a Division I-A conference.

In doing so, FIU probably wasn't equipped to handle the situation from a compliance standpoint.

Think FIU athletic director Pete Garcia didn't inherit a mess when he took over in 2006?

Sun Belt black eye

Upon being hired, Garcia did an internal investigation and discovered the numerous violations, and the university self-reported them to the NCAA.

All of the violations occurred under the watch of former athletic director Rick Mello, who is now an associate commissioner for the Sun Belt Conference.

Hmm.

FIU also has APR issues, something MTSU knows all about. When the initial results came out for the 2003-04 academic year, the Blue Raider football program ranked last in the country.

Since making it a priority, MTSU's football program has made the grade the past three years.

More money was put into the academic center in terms of hiring tutors, players were made to go to class, and the results have been predictable.

Funny how if you put resources into something, good things come out of it.

FIU is in a similar situation in that it is better prepared to handle compliance issues, and apparently has an AD who will make sure things are done the right way.

That being noted, any time you've got a program in your conference on four years probation, it's a black eye for your league.

Monte Hale Jr. is sports editor of The Daily News Journal. E-mail him at [email protected]

tough article, ouch!!! :-\



http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/columnists/sfl-flspmikec10sbmay10,0,7064560.story


In quest to be big-time, FIU looks amateurish
by Michael Cunningham
May 10, 2008

In its zeal to compete at the highest level of intercollegiate football, Florida International University sacrificed integrity on NCAA eligibility and academic requirements for its athletes.

The NCAA didn't quite use those words when punishing FIU for its failings in academic progress and rules compliance, but that's the gist of it. There's no other way to interpret the one-two punch the Golden Panthers took from the NCAA this week.

First, the NCAA told FIU its football and baseball athletes are lagging behind academic standards. The next day it said FIU hadn't grasped the basics of things like eligibility and the proper awarding of scholarships, with the dreaded "lack of institutional control" charge included.

Considering academics and compliance make up the bulk of an athletics department's administrative responsibilities, the NCAA essentially was saying FIU athletics hadn't done much of anything right from 2002-2007.

FIU says it has a grasp on the issues now. It hired Athletics Director Pete Garcia in October 2006 with the mandate to clean up the program, and his findings led to the discovery of NCAA violations and subsequent self-imposed scholarship reductions.

The NCAA accepted those while adding a public reprimand, four years probation and the vacation of records involving the 45 athletes who were deemed ineligible from 2002 to 2007. Garcia said the scholarship losses have been absorbed.

The NCAA attributed FIU's problems to starting a football program and competing in the division formerly known as I-A in a four-year span. FIU's compliance and academic support programs didn't grow with its football aspirations. So in trying to be big time, FIU came off looking very small. Is there a lesson to be learned about being too ambitious in college athletics?

"You do have a point," Garcia said. "But I think what [the NCAA] is saying, there's more to it than just rolling out a team. There has to be an infrastructure in place, and that takes money. For us there were some growing pains, but we have now added systems and processes and we are ready to move forward."

It's clear Garcia, who went through a similar process as an administrator at UM, inherited an athletics department in turmoil. The NCAA said FIU misapplied "basic eligibility rules" and awarded too many scholarships in three sports.

To justify spending on athletics programs that usually lose money, universities often tout the positive publicity they can generate and the unity and pride instilled in people associated with the program. But we can see the pitfalls of this thinking at FIU.

In chasing football glory, FIU has created more embarrassing episodes than positive headlines with two NCAA probations in the last three years. Can there be much pride about a football program that has more forfeited scholarships to NCAA violations and academic punishment (six) than victories (one) since 2006?

FIU students should think about what they get for that $5.85 "football fee" tacked onto every credit hour. Perhaps FIU President Modesto A. Maidique should explain to students whose academic programs are to suffer funding cuts why he poured money into an athletics program in disarray.

None of this is meant to demean FIU athletes. It appears they were the victims of administrators who didn't provide the proper money and know-how to stay square with the NCAA.

The football team already was on probation since 2005 for major NCAA violations. The fallout was less practice time and restricted recruiting for FIU football; losing these six scholarships will make it even harder for the Panthers to compete.

Worst than that are the non-revenue sports that suffer because FIU so badly wanted football. Those programs scrape for resources, and now will have lost more than 15 scholarships because of NCAA violations.

It turns out FIU's football ambition not only embarrassed the school, but set back all of Panthers' athletics.

Maybe not as tough as this one, though:

http://www.sundaymorningqb.com/2008/5/8/6498/42752

FIU clearly wasn't ready to play at this level.  I'm not trying to rub it in – it's just the way it is.  In fact, I kind of feel bad for them.  Most CF fans already think the SBC is lame, and this just gives them reason to laugh at us some more.  I hope things are organized better in our own house, but our APR wasn't very encouraging either.

The said

Maybe not as tough as this one, though:

http://www.sundaymorningqb.com/2008/5/8/6498/42752

FIU clearly wasn't ready to play at this level.  I'm not trying to rub it in – it's just the way it is.  In fact, I kind of feel bad for them.  Most CF fans already think the SBC is lame, and this just gives them reason to laugh at us some more.  I hope things are organized better in our own house, but our APR wasn't very encouraging either.

Man, each article is more crushing than the next. I agree with the article that it's b.s. for perennial powerhouses to ensure they go bowling by scheduling much weaker teams. But that's just business as usual I guess. If they don't have 9+ wins per season, the s*** would really hit the fan. I hope we can start a trend of 9+ win seasons because that will really establish us on the national scene as a "good" program and not just a "lucky" program.

Anyway, FIU certainly knows it's in the doghouse… this next season is going to be crucial to winning back some modicum of respect from the outside world.

Bowling should be determined by both number of wins AND quality of wins…. that way the SEC wouldn't be able to load up on Sun Belt wins to get 9 teams into bowls.

The only program at FIU that was not D1A in the last 5 years was football. All the rest of their programs were already in the D1A Sunbelt. Their soccer team is in D1A CUSA. I don't know how much you can blame on moving up too fast if only one program had to move up. FAU was only one year ahead in football. We moved all our programs to the SBC in 2006 from the lowly Atlantic Sun Conference without any problems and were very competitive in some including softball and swimming/diving which we won the conference championship the first year.

By far the biggest difference is the AD.  Angelos' specialty is compliance. You can read about it in one of the current articles about Jarvis' hire. We took a hit on the APR, OK, but we have come clean on the latest audit we had. I believe their only finding was FAU's wasn't orderly about some of the record keeping and followups with recruits.

It doesn't matter now. The damage is done. FIU knows what it has to do and it looks like they already have the corrections in place.