Colleges

Scandal keeps FSU players out of bowl game

Up to 25 players will sit out as school officials investigate academic misconduct cases.

By BRIAN LANDMAN, Times Staff Writer
Published December 19, 2007

TALLAHASSEE -- As many as 25 Florida State football players will not play in the Dec. 31 Music City Bowl, school officials announced Tuesday as they sorted through a widening case of academic misconduct.

"We have some players not traveling for one reason and some for another, including those who are ineligible for the bowl because of academic issues," coach Bobby Bowden said in a statement. "Our staff is in the process of determining what adjustments we must make for the game. We will have a few practices to get our plans in place."

Student privacy laws prevent him or any school official from naming which players will not make the trip to Nashville to play Kentucky, regardless if it's for missed classes, poor grades in the fall semester, a violation of a team rule or the academic scandal.

"And it would be unfair for you to speculate what the reason was," cautioned Lee Hinkle, the school's vice president for university relations.

FSU began investigating academic misconduct last spring after learning students received answers to tests in an online course from a tutor in the Office of Athletic Academic Support Services. The tutor, a graduate assistant, resigned as did a learning specialist, who was said to have helped other student-athletes. Many of the students are athletes, and FSU sent a preliminary report to the NCAA in September.

The Tallahassee Democrat reported that 23 of the football players are connected to the misconduct scandal. Eleven of them have starting experience and at least four are not on scholarship, the paper said.

The number of players involved is large, about 20 to 25 percent of a roster of more than 100, including nonscholarship players. No school has suspended as many players since Wisconsin held 26 players out of regular-season games in 2000 for getting special price breaks at a shoe store.

Most schools have players declared ineligible for bowl games, but FSU has had some high-profile cases, including when:

• All-America receiver Marvin "Snoop" Minnis failed to satisfy semester requirements and missed the 2001 Orange Bowl against Oklahoma, the Bowl Championship Series finale that FSU lost 13-2.
• Starting quarterback Chris Rix missed the 2003 Sugar Bowl loss to Georgia for failing to show up for a final exam in a religion class. That violated the so-called "Deion Rule;" in his final collegiate season, FSU's star cornerback Deion Sanders stopped going to class, something that wasn't learned until after he helped the Seminoles beat Auburn in the 1988 Sugar Bowl.

For those involved in this scandal, at least the ones with remaining eligibility, the bowl game likely won't be the only game they miss.

Academic fraud carries the loss of one-year of eligibility, but apparently FSU officials and the NCAA have come up with a penalty that an admitted violator will only have to sit out for 30-percent of his or her season.

For a 12-game football season, that's four games.

That's incidentally how many games senior receiver Joslin Shaw of Plant City sat out before he was reinstated earlier this season. Another player, sophomore defensive end Kevin McNeil, hasn't played at all this season and his status remains unclear. His mother, Patricia, told the Times that her son recently had shoulder surgery and "will be coming back to play" next season.

For months, those were the only two football players identified as being among a group of 23 student-athletes in nine sports who had been involved in the academic misconduct investigation.

School president T.K. Wetherell, on vacation in Montana, declined to comment Tuesday. But previously he told the Times that at the suggestion of the NCAA, FSU expanded the scope of its inquiry, looking at three semesters beginning with the spring 2007 and going backward.

As student athletes were interviewed and reinterviewed, some accompanied by lawyers, a key issue was how fast they completed tests and how well they did on them.

Some apparently breezed through the tests in a matter of minutes with flying colors, which could be verified by when they logged onto the system. That has raised red flags.

The class, believed to be a music class with hundreds of students each semester, also was flawed in that the professor hadn't changed the test for years.

Wetherell said recently that the school has decided that the class will be vacated for the student-athletes, forcing them to re-take the course; the new grade will be substituted for the original one.

"As a university, what we're looking at is making sure that we have an environment for students to be able to learn, and if there are people in the academic ranks who are not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we want to make sure we're taking care of that," Hinkle said. "In terms of the whole student body, we would presume that problems that arise for athletes might also arise for other students, but the other students may not be on athletic scholarships and may not be governed by a ruling body like the NCAA."

She added that the school's final report to the NCAA, which FSU has hired a consulting group to help draft, is "not ready at this point and it could well go into next year."

The report will include self-imposed sanctions, Wetherell said, perhaps scholarship reductions.

Fast Facts: Notable scandals

Florida State is not alone in confronting academic scandal in its football program. Some recent examples:

• May 2005: The NCAA puts Nicholls State on probation for four years because an academic adviser and assistant football coach did course work for athletes.
• November 2003: In a three-day span, Central Florida suspends four players for academic indiscretions, but those actions do not warrant NCAA involvment.
• August 2001: The entire University of Southern California athletic program is placed on two years' probation after staff in the academic service office wrote papers for two football players and a female diver.
• December 2001: Marshall University is placed on four years' probation after players are given copies of a final exam early.

Source: Times wires

[Last modified December 19, 2007, 02:24:23]