Suspension, probation, post-season ban
After a multiyear investigation into the university’s athletic programs, the NCAA suspends Boeheim for nine ACC games, takes away 12 men’s basketball scholarships, and orders that 108 of Boeheim’s wins must be vacated (during which ineligible players participated). Syracuse University is placed on five years of probation as well as two years of recruiting restrictions, and they must also vacate all wins by their football team during the 2004, 2005, and 2006 seasons. The violations involve academic misconduct; extra benefits; failure to follow the drug-testing policy; impermissible booster activity; impermissible academic assistance and services; Boeheim’s failure to promote an atmosphere of compliance and monitor his staff; and the school’s lack of control over its athletics program.
Over the course of a decade, Syracuse University did not control and monitor its athletics programs, and its head men’s basketball coach failed to monitor his program…Improper institutional involvement and influence in a student’s academic work in order to gain or maintain eligibility is a violation of NCAA rules and a violation of the most fundamental core values of the NCAA and higher education. The behavior in this case, which placed the desire to achieve success on the basketball court over academic integrity, demonstrated clearly misplaced institutional priorities.
University disinvites photographer
Syracuse is reported to disinvite Washington Post photographer du Cille, a Pulitzer Prize winner, from a journalism workshop as he had been in Liberia three weeks earlier, more than the 21-day Ebola incubation period. A student is reported to have researched du Cille and discovered the trip and raised concerns, after which provost Eric Spina consulted with health officials and made the call. Du Cille:
It’s a disappointment to me. I’m pissed off and embarrassed and completely weirded out that a journalism institution that should be seeking out facts and details is basically pandering to hysteria.
The Dan Patrick Show interview
Boeheim discusses Syracuse’s move to the ACC:
No I am just a basketball coach. This is a university decision and I am proud of my university that I don’t make those decisions. They have to be made at the highest level and I have enough trouble deciding who’s starting and what play to run. That’s my expertise. That’s what I can do.
99.9 The Fan in Raleigh interview
Paulus speaks about the football playbook at Syracuse:
No, they gave me the playbook and it’s the same one everyone else had and got. I just got it a few months later and it definitely is a complex playbook and the terminology, it’s a little bit different than high school obviously, it’s more sophisticated. But, when I was seeing this offense on film, when I came to visit Syracuse, and when I was making the decision, it was one where I felt it fits my strengths, and one where I was really excited to have the opportunity to be in.