OU forced to forfeit all 2005 wins . . .
 

The Oklahoma football program must forfeit all wins from the 2005 season and will lose scholarships as a result of players being paid for work they had not performed . . .

Link to ESPNU story

Pretty sick penalty - I wonder if any of this will fall on Stoops, especially given the relative lack of national prominence the last few seasons.

Actually, they don't forfeit the wins -- to forfeit means they'd be recorded as an "L." These will be recorded as vacated -- that means they essentially never happened. That's a huge difference.

I'm not too ticked about the ruling. Anyone in this town knows Brad McRae (the manager of the dealership) is absolute sleaze.

He should have been disassociated a long time ago simply because of his mullet.

At any rate, the only real hit is a 2 year 2-scholarship reduction which was self-imposed already. The University has also disassociated from that dealership, a purely symbolic act since that dealership is now under new management.

As far as hurting Stoops? Oh hell no. We in Oklahoma (well, minus the Okie-lite fans) are all big fans of Stoops. As to his national prominence? Who cares what the W-L record was 2 years ago as determined by the NCAA? Stoops still did win those games.. everyone will know that except for the "official" stat books.

Note that this is a change from the original ESPN.com article, which was incorrect - that makes it less of a story, for sure.

My reason for asking had nothing to do with the "official" stat books - after the initial national title years, while he's put up great seasons (8-4 and 11-3 are certainly nothing to sneeze at) the record has dropped off (relatively speaking, as I noted), and his 2007 recruiting class wasn't even top-25 while UT, A&M and Nebraska all made that list. Add to this the rumors of scandal beyond the Bomar incident that populate the blogosphere, and that's the reason for my asking - although it's good to see he's largely avoided blame.

This is a pretty weak penalty. However, the NCAA has been pretty weak of late.

I'm still patiently waiting for the NCAA to take action on the obvious USC violations, but I'm not holding my breath.

Yeah, the penalties for USC and tOSU *should* be higher. The only real difference between those two and OU is that OU disclosed what was going on, cooperated with the NCAA and even imposed some pretty harsh penalties on itself.

The only additional penalty here was the amendment to the record book.

As for last year's recruiting class, the word is that a lot of recruits were negative recruited because of these violations. That said, the '07 class ahs been pretty damn good. It was ranked 14th that year which ain't shabby.

This year, thus far, Oklahoma is ranked #5 by Rivals currently. I imagine that they'll be doing even better now that prospects know that the penalties imposed here won't be serious.

"On Aug. 3 -- the day before the Sooners began preseason practice -- Stoops dismissed Bomar and Quinn from the team after the university determined they had been paid for work not performed at Big Red Sports and Imports."

Oops. We bought a car for our son from these guys when he was at Oklahoma.

I'm disappointed in you DA.

Actually, it was a pretty good deal.

We just sold it.

Sounds like the players had a pretty good deal, too. No work and good pay.

Anyone who doesn't think this goes on at every major program in the nation is naive as heck. Hundred dollar handshakes and things of that nature happen in every program, even the small ones.

If colleges would just pay the damn athletes, we could all stop pretending this stuff doesn't really happen.

I think most colleges would be happy to -- but let's all hide behind the NCAA rules a while longer.

I agree - the real issue is the level of athletic department or team "awareness" (more likely influence) . . . really, the separation between teams is more on the level of what they are willing to ignore or forgive, rather than whether they're all 'clean' or not.

College football and basketball are incredibly dirty, there's no doubt about it.

I don't know that paying players will really end it, though - is the pay based on performance? It would have to be 'standardized' to prevent the rich from getting richer as it were, which would just lead to the same sort of tipping and payouts. I don't know that there's really a solution at all.

I'd just like to see some of the nations powerhouses get their fair share. Unless you're an SEC powerhouse, it seems the NCAA is pretty hesitant.

The thing is -- SEC schools don't understand the concept of protecting their competitor schools for the sake of the conference. Instead, they incessantly investigate and report on their fellow schools.. well.. mostly Tennessee and Alabama do this to each other. When they actually do turn up some malfeasance, which is something that accompanies every single Division I school in the country, they sort of force the NCAA to act.

It's crap, but those schools bring it on themselves. Tell your alums to stop acting like douchebags. Problem solved.

While I do not work at an SEC program, I am an administrator for a D-I athletic department(not the institution in my signature, but I did work for their athletic department for 4 years), and I would just like to comment that Oklahoma was monitoring student-athlete employment the same way that every other school in the country is monitoring their employment, pretty much the student-athlete gets a form (that details ncaa rules, including must be paid for actual work performed and how much they will be paid) from their compliance office fills it out takes the form to their supervisor and has the supervisor sign the form acknowledging that they understand the NCAA rules.

Yes, all programs are cheating and are dirty, but sometimes it isn't because they are trying to be dirty, it is because it is nearly impossible to monitor all of the NCAA rules pertaining to the programs. I do not possibly have the time to drive around to every student-athletes place of employment and make sure they are actually showing up to work.

Oh and I am also waiting for USC to get theirs and Duke too.

Does anyone else find Paul Dee being the head of the NCAA committee sort of like Syria being in charge of the UN Human Rights Committee?