Southern Methodist University Football Scandal - The NCAA and The Death Penalty Since The SMU Case

The NCAA and The Death Penalty Since The SMU Case

Despite the NCAA's apparent wariness about imposing such an extreme sanction, it has indicated that the SMU case is its standard for imposing it. For instance, in its investigation of Baylor basketball, the NCAA deemed Baylor's violations to be as serious as those SMU had engaged in almost 20 years earlier. However, it praised Baylor for taking swift corrective action, including forcing the resignation of coach Dave Bliss. According to the committee, Baylor's actions stood in marked contrast to SMU's behavior; as mentioned above, SMU officials knew serious violations were occurring and did nothing to stop them. Bliss was coach at SMU at the same time as the football scandal. Baylor did receive what amounted to a half-season death penalty - the cancellation of its non-conference games for the 2005-2006 season.

Further supporting this, the NCAA handed down a "death penalty" to Morehouse in 2003 for what it deemed "a complete failure" to comply with NCAA rules and regulations, even though it was Morehouse's first major infractions case.

The NCAA seemed to underline this even further in its 2012 announcement of sanctions against Penn State for school officials' cover-up of former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky's rampant abuse of children. In a sweeping consent decree implementing the sanctions, the NCAA stated that the "death penalty" was primarily reserved for repeat violators that had neither cooperated with the NCAA nor taken any corrective measures. Although there had been serious discussion about imposing a death penalty on Penn State without any preliminaries, the NCAA ultimately decided against it because the school took swift corrective action once the scandal broke out in full, including firing head coach Joe Paterno and forcing the resignation of president Graham Spanier.