TALLAHASSEE – Florida State University attended their NCAA hearing on October 18 concerning the cheating scandals that rocked the university and put another ding in their athletic program and will be anxiously awaiting the committee’s decision. 

The good news is, this time the rap isn’t an athlete raping or getting busted with weapons and drugs. This bad news is, the scandal involved university personnel; more like a corrupt white-collar offense; and higher-ups must surely have known about it. If they didn’t, then they weren’t managing their staff properly.

The initial report of a cheating scandal came from a solo student who ratted out their fellow athletes during spring 2007.

After receiving the news and putting their brain cells together, the university decided to do an “in-house” investigation. That inquiry revealed that staffers provided student-athletes with answers to exams and went as far as tying papers for them during 2006-07.

In all, 61 athletes cheated and were forced to retest. Out of the 61 Seminoles retested, 59 of their scores took a plunge.

In their most recent investigation, the NCAA found no additional evidence of academic cheating-can you say paper shredder–but may still consider additional penalties against the school, including the forfeiture of games.

The university admitted cheating and manipulating of scores occurred but argued against having to forfeit games. FSU may be expecting a slap on the wrist and appears to be ready to fight to the death about taking a few wins from their football team.

“We believe that ours was a through and exhaustive inquiry including extensive examinations of computer records and files to search for any evidence of impropriety regarding NCAA or university rules,” Florida State president T.K. Wetherell said in a statement.

This is a typical example of manipulating and cheating to get ahead, then when you’re caught, do an “in-house” investigation and make a statement about how thorough and unbiased your findings are.

People are not that stupid, T.K.

Should we have criminals do their own investigations after we arrest them?

How about the next time you guys play the Miami Hurricanes we ask a few of the ‘Canes coaching staff to put on the zebra-wear, give them a whistle and let them call the game.

An AP report stated that in February, Florida State announced it was penalizing itself with two years of probation, the loss of scholarships in 10 sports and suspensions of 30 percent of a season for 61 athletes – about a third of them football players, many of them starters. The probation does not include a ban on postseason play.

Of course it doesn’t-and the 30% may sound like a lot but it’s only three games of the football season.

Again, do we look that frickin’ stupid, T.K!

Florida State also has made changes in staffing, basically fired a few ‘Scooter Libbys’, who were doing something a higher up must have known about.

It will be interesting to see if the NCAA does the right thing and nails FSU with severe sanctions as opposed to accepting FSU’s “self-sentence”.

In the meantime, the Seminoles will have to sit and sweat it out.

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