The last week of July brings us one step closer to the start of another college football season as the countdown to the opening of training camp is on. This is a great time of year to start planning out your betting strategy for the upcoming season.
NCAA hands-down sanctions for Penn
State
.jpg "NCAA President Mark Emmert")
The fall-out
from the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal at Penn State University has
proven to be extremely costly. The NCAA
announced on Monday what steps it will take to properly punish the school and
football program for what has been determined as gross negligence on the part
of school officials, including former head coach Joe Paterno, in the handling of
the matter over the past decade or so.
The Nittany
Lions will be banned from postseason play for the term of four years starting
with this season. They will also loose 10 initial scholarships and 20 total
scholarships for each of the four years of the ban. The NCAA also handed-down a
$60 million sanction and will force the football program to vacate all its wins
dating back to the 1998 season. The NCAA career-record of Paterno’s 409 wins
will be adjusted accordingly. This is the longest ban handed down by the NCAA
since Oklahoma State received a three-year ban in 1989 for improper financial
aid and extra player benefits.
Former FBI
Director Louis Freeh conducted a private investigation into the entire matter
earlier this year and concluded that the school’s leaders “repeatedly concealed
critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse from authorities, the
university’s board of trustees, the Penn State community, and the public at
large”.
ACC focuses on maintaining a
14-member conference
The Syracuse
Orange and the Pittsburgh Panthers made it official earlier this month that
they were indeed leaving the Big East to join the ACC on July 1 of next year.
With the addition of those two teams, the total membership in the conference
will stand at 14 schools. The powers to be in the conference are focusing their
energy on making sure that the ACC remains a viable major conference for
college football, one that stands on equal footing with the four other power
conferences (SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, and PAC-12) despite the fact that it has a
woeful 2-13 record in BCS bowl games since 1998.
There is
growing concern that schools such as Florida State and Clemson might look to
find better exposure for their football program in the Big 12, but ACC
Commissioner John Swofford stated that he remains confident that all 14 members
are committed to remaining in the conference.
Miami could be back in hot water with
the NCAA
Last Friday,
Yahoo Sports reported that a few unidentified sources at the University of
Miami stated that former football employee Sean Allen, who has already been
linked to former booster and convicted Ponzi scheme felon Nevin Shapiro, could
have assisted members of Al Golden’s coaching staff with the recruitment of
certain players. Shapiro has already claimed that he provided dozens of
athletes and potential recruits at the university with extra benefits over an
eight-year period.
Since this story first broke last August, Miami
has been bracing for the fall-out from these allegations as the NCAA continues
its investigation into the whole matter. Golden stands by his past record of
compliance with NCAA rules, but this latest round of allegations of wrong-doing
has the potential to explode right in his face in the form of new NCAA
sanctions on the football program.