No more appeals, no more obfuscations. USC is guilty as charged, and the scholarships are gone.
While official word hasn't been reported, the rumor mill in the mainstream media is swirling and it seems pretty solid.
It will be interesting to see how this impacts the current team through defections (unlikely to be many at this point) and in recruiting (should be a huge impact going forward - both in terms of #'s and you also gotta wonder about the kids that will come on board with a ball and chain like this hooked to the program's quickly-shriveling ankles).
USC will also need to keep every player healthy - and they'll need to do so focused on the long run rather than the short run. And they'll also have to keep everyone academically eligible. Transfers, drop-outs, and long-term injuries now become a huge deal, as players leaving cannot be replaced in the next class. Coaches and players will have to be super careful. Hitting will be minimal I suppose. There will be some extra (or maybe just SOME?) studying. The Trogans may get soft, bored, annoyed or all of the above.
I wonder if the Ex-Announcer and Kiffykins will consider 2011 a lost season to write off and therefore hold back players they might otherwise play to retain eligibility. This might help mitigate the impact down the line when the next few classes, which will be terribly small, are finally upper classmen.
Though there's much debate about how much this will impact things at USC, I took a shot at estimating it a while back. Here's that article: Fall of Troy Just a Matter of Time (going back and reading the USC fans' comments is kinda fun. it wasn't an easy thing to figure out, but MAN they were freaking out)
Now that it's done, I'll be very interested to see how things shake out - especially after USC turns in another mediocre, non-bowl season in 2011. Will the Trogans' ship sink for another decade like the late 80's to the mid-90s? Or will they be able to spend their way back to top shape in a relatively short period of time?
By tjak May 25, 2011 - 7:23 pm
Biscuit, get ready for those usc guys to go at you again on how this won’t affect them in any way.
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By Erik '04 May 25, 2011 - 10:12 pm
I think you’re right that they will keep a tight lid on the freshmen in order to retain eligibility, but then you’re playing upperclassmen and/or starters on special teams where they could get hurt easily. It’s a lovely catch 22.
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By TLNDMA May 26, 2011 - 5:00 am
Three years of 15 players max combined with a cap of 75 total schollys will handcuff their recruiting. With over 65 players after next season on scholly, that has immediate affects.
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By E-Man May 26, 2011 - 7:37 am
It’s almost like 3 years of T-Willy recruiting…
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By Brad May 26, 2011 - 12:08 pm
I think that the effects of this handicap on recruiting is going to severely cripple the program. It lowers the people they can get, and lowers the quality they can get since a lot of kids won’t want to miss bowl game and play on a crippled team when they could go elsewhere.
I think we see USC crippled to average 5-8 win a year team for the next couple seasons. If you look at what similar (and notably lesser) penalties did to Miami in the mid-90s and to Alabama in early 2000s, I think its going to be at least 5 or 6 years before they can get back to a truly elite level.
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By The Biscuit May 26, 2011 - 12:31 pm
The thing is, they’re already on trajectory to be average the next few years. Where they’re REALLY screwed is out in 2015 or so, when the reduced classes start to be upper classmen. Teams with very few older/mature guys don’t end up playing that well. Remember 2007 for ND? That’s what it’s going to be like. It IS very similar to Ty being your recruiter.
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By SDI May 26, 2011 - 3:20 pm
And that doesn’t even take into account the damage done by Kiffikins and his crew. Even last year, before the sanctions really took effect, they only won 8 games, with a bunch of kids that had experience winning a bunch of games under Carrol. USC will be dealing with the carnage caused by the sanctions, with Kiffin in charge, relying on a bunch of players that have only ever been coached by Kiffins.
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By Jeremy May 26, 2011 - 12:58 pm
From now on, we’ll just refer to this as getting “Ty’ed.” As in, It took Bama several years to recover from getting Ty’ed.
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By Brad May 26, 2011 - 3:00 pm
I like that.
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By TLNDMA May 26, 2011 - 3:46 pm
SCs last two classes have had over 50 players combined. This year having a lot of early entries that count towards last year’s class. They could regret that going forward due to the 75 total cap. After this coming season they will have 69 players with at least one year of eligibilty left. That seems to limit either new recruits or 5th yr. players.
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By The Biscuit May 26, 2011 - 4:57 pm
yep – in my post way back i guessed that next year’s class will be 3-4 players (assuming they keep a few 5ths). crazy!
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By TLNDMA May 26, 2011 - 6:14 pm
yeah, the decision will be do we rob Peter(the future) to pay Paul(now)?….the Pete in question is not Carroll.
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By GQ574 May 26, 2011 - 4:01 pm
With Lame as the head coach, how could any $C fan really think they would give that man, a break???? LOLOLOL
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By daybreakboys May 26, 2011 - 9:34 pm
Great. Now on to tO$U.
Consistency, NCAA. Gotta start somewhere.
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By E-Man May 27, 2011 - 7:38 am
Not that I’m an SC apologist, nor have a special axe to grind with OSU, and please someone correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t what OSU is alleged to be involved with much more serious than SC?
Concerning SC, with the exception of a running backs coach, all of the higher ups in the football program and with the athletic department have plausable deniability.
Concerning OSU, the more stuff that keeps leaking out it seems that the head coach for certain knew things and tried to hide it, and it may make it’s way into several members of the athletic department before it’s all said and done. In my mind, that’s worse, and should be stricter punishments. Maybe not 80′s SMU bad, but definately 2000s Alamaba bad, if not even more.
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By DJ May 27, 2011 - 8:13 am
No, the finding of the NCAA was that the USC athletic department should have known that violations were taking place — in other words, that there was no plausible deniability. Schools are under an affirmative duty to police themselves, and to report violations.
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By The Biscuit May 27, 2011 - 8:51 am
I also think USC did it’s best to thwart/hinder the investigation (and at the least they weren’t helpful) which is a no-no as well.
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By E-Man May 27, 2011 - 12:25 pm
Understand. USC should have been looking and weren’t. My point is that they weren’t apparently trying to cover up what they knew and when they knew it –as it is starting to appear to be the case for OSU.
I’ll bet you that Tressel and some AD people end up going down for this. It’s too big. More people had to know.
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By SDI May 27, 2011 - 10:47 pm
Agree completely. No one could ever prove that Carrol even knew what was going on let alone failed to report it, let alone lied about it publicly more than once like Tressel did. The only thing that was worse for USC was the whole OJ Mayo mess which was part of the reason that SC got hosed. If memory serves, he got cash and his coach had something to do with that.
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