Updated 8:30 p.m. ET: Per a statement from the school, Boise State has accepted the NCAA Committee on Infractions’ decision to keep the number of reduced football scholarships at nine.
“The Infractions Appeals Committee favorably recognized that Boise State had a compelling case for reconsideration of an appropriate penalty,” Boise State President Bob Kustra said in the statement. “However, the Committee on Infractions disregarded the ruling. We will abide by the decision, but we are disappointed in the outcome and the lack of meaningful review.”
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Back over the summer, Boise State received a glimmer of hope that, perhaps, it would not face a reduction in nine football scholarships over three years after all. BSU had been hit with the penalty last year as a result of several infractions ranging multiple sports, including secondary violations for impermissible benefits received by incoming members of the football team.
Those “benefits” included “impermissible housing, transportation or meals, where an incoming student-athlete was provided a place to sleep (often on a couch or floor), a car ride or was provided free food by an existing student-athlete” and were “enjoyed” by 63 players from 2005-09 and totaled less than $5,000. So, the NCAA’s Division I Infractions Appeals Committee requested that the Committee on Infractions reconsider the punishment, calling it “excessive” and an “abuse of discretion” and holy cow those are a lot of quotation marks in one paragraph.
Turns out, the COI still feels the penalty is just. Per a release, the COI announced Wednesday it was standing by the nine-scholarship penalty. Boise State will still forfeit scholarships from 2011, this year and next year.
“While past infractions cases and their respective penalties are a part of the institutional memory of the Committee on Infractions when it tailors the penalties in a case, they do not provide a ‘one-size-fits-all’ measure of whether a penalty is fair and appropriate,” the COI stated in its report. “Each case – and the fairness of the penalties imposed in each case – ultimately stands on their own facts.
You can read the entire release HERE.
Boise State self-imposed a three-scholarship reduction, effective last season, before the NCAA added six more that amount. BSU could appeal again to the to the Infractions Appeals Committee, but with one year left on the sanctions, it might not take further action.