Back in November of 2016, the NCAA ordered Notre Dame football to vacate its wins from the 2012 and 2013 seasons after violations by a student-trainer that allegedly included course work being completed on behalf of the players.
Here’s more on the background of that story.
It might have taken well over a year for the school to officially respond, but that’s what Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins did in a scathing rebuke of the NCAA itself. In responding to the body’s denial of an appeal from the program on Tuesday, Jenkins didn’t hold back.
“The NCAA is not, of course, an academic association with general responsibility for academic integrity at America’s colleges and universities,” Jenkins wrote, via the school’s official website. “It is, rather, an athletic association that regulates academic misconduct in certain narrowly drawn cases involving students who are athletes.”
This is akin to the president indicating that the NCAA has no oversight when it comes to academic integrity in colleges around the United Stats. Of course, that’s a foolish stance to take. And precedent in this regard has been made multiple times by the body over the years.
“To impose a severe penalty for this retroactive ineligibility establishes a dangerous precedent and turns the seminal concept of academic autonomy on its head,”. Jenkins continues. “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.”
The NCAA acting in a random way? Say it isn’t so.
This has been an issue for many programs around the nation. It’s not simply limited to the NCAA somehow singling out Notre Dame. But we digress.
Jenkins went on to note that his school wants to work with the NCAA to create new legislation that will “lead to more reasonable decisions.”
Good luck with that.