This week we received notice that Charleston Southern's athletic program received NCAA sanctions.
It made me shake my head. NCAA sanctions usually come at schools that average 90,000 fans at their football games, not a school that averages 3,000. Or maybe it comes at a basketball school with 20,000 seats and the players are on some sort of payroll. We've seen that a few times recently.
But what in the name of Fort Sumter could the Buccaneers have done wrong? Then … I remembered a couple of whispers I was hearing way back in 2016.
Flashback to Aug. 27, 2016. Charleston Southern was coming off a record-breaking 2015 season where the Bucs won games in the double-digits, were returning just about everybody along with a stellar coaching staff … and the cherry on top leading into 2016? The Bucs were thrilled to be invited to the FCS Kickoff Classic to come to the FargoDome and take on the defending national champion North Dakota State Bison.
Everybody thought it was going to get ugly.
Then they saw the Bucs in action. It was 3-3 at halftime, 10-10 going into the fourth quarter and 17-17 at the end of regulation. The truth was, this CSU program could do that black-and-blue thing too — staunch defense, clutch offense, punch-you-in-the-mouth style of play. This looked like a big-time FCS program on Aug. 27, 2016. Its stadium may have needed temporary seating just to help host a playoff game the year before, but the product on the field could go toe-to-toe with anybody in the country, including the mighty Bison. It seemed like CSU would blossom into the Cinderella story of the year, nationally, in the FCS.
Then it all crumbled in a matter of weeks.
Why? Word began to creep out that football players had used school-issued debit cards to buy things at campus bookstores that weren't considered "academic". The dollars were supposed to go for books. Well, the players bought their books. But sometimes there were 200, maybe 300 dollars per term left over. Players at that time and also this week told me they bought Charleston Southern T-shirts and hats for their parents for Christmas, a calculator for class, a cellphone charger so they could call home. Folks, we're talking about 200-300 dollars of well-earned scholarship money going to CSU-branded items promoting the program back home, along with things a college kid needs. And the only place these leftover dollars could be used was in an on-campus bookstore, where the dollars were being recirculated back to the school anyway.
Well, this week we found out that these "misgivings' — which weren't exactly corrected by compliance at the time when players asked what they should do with the balance on the cards, it will "go away" they were told — may cost the program its wins in 2015 and 2016, along with its Big South Conference championships. There were other transgressions within the program, instances where junior college players were allowed to compete without fulfilling their transfer eligibility requirements, players not meeting their obligations in terms of number of credits attained to maintain eligibility, etc. This is standard oversight procedure by people in administration, who admitted they were "overwhelmed". No, it doesn't look good, but this is on compliance and administration, not the athletes.
When the NCAA-issued report got to the 34 athletes who "improperly used scholarship book monies for items not related to books" … come on NCAA (and CSU), maybe this wasn't made clear by compliance? That is the job of the compliance department. The former CSU athletes I talked to said they even asked about the residual amounts left over. Nobody said "don't do that". These student-athletes had bought their books already … is a CSU Bucs T-shirt or a calculator purchased on campus a horrific thing? Yet CSU acted immediately back in 2016 and forced players to miss games … including the matchup CSU players had been waiting for, a chance to play Florida State in Tallahassee.
The Bucs had proven they could go hang with NDSU — a team that followed its game with CSU with a win at the Big Ten's Iowa two weeks later (Iowa couldn't take NDSU to overtime, by the way). Maybe CSU could give FSU fits too? Well … not without 16 suspended players in the lineup because of a ticky-tack gray-area rule. Erik Austell, an FCS All American lineman that year who had NFL Scouts looking at him, certainly could have benefited from playing in the Florida State game. And no, I didn't talk to Erik for this story. But NFL Scouts ask for film on games like Florida State first and foremost. Erik was sitting at home as punishment for the debit card situation. He wasn't the only CSU prospect hoping to get that film.
Back then, this one-game ban situation was self-imposed by the CSU administration. All of the key administrators from that time span have retired since and the program is trying to rebuild itself. Now the athletic program is on two-years probation, the football team will lose six precious scholarships, and it'll be tough to bounce back. There's no question this mess has stunted the growth of a program that was flourishing.
Hey, NCAA, you don't allow these guys to work and make a few bucks (not that they have a ton of free time anyway) and you surely aren't going to allow them to be paid — but you're going to slap sanctions on the school and take wins away from these guys who busted their rear ends? Over T-shirts, hats and calculators? At an FCS school that routinely elevates walk-ons to scholarship status? What kind of bass-ackwards logic is this?
We're not talking about felons, mind you. We're not talking about players who were given cash benefits. We're talking about a tiny FCS school in Charleston, S.C.
The administrators who bungled this situation are gone. There is no scapegoat left, apparently, except for the players who used the funds. This isn't Jamey Chadwell's fault, the former coach. This isn't Mark Tucker's fault, the current coach who was with Chadwell. These two gentlemen and their staffs were squeezing lemonade out of the lemon seeds for years and making it tasty, with an administration that didn't seem to want football to "get too big", as one of my sources put it. Thankfully for CSU, that culture is already changing, many have told me. For example, CSU's 2019 recruiting class for football already looks good and is an indicator that better times are coming. But there's no question 2016 could have been a monster step forward for CSU, but it was a massive step back — and now the NCAA comes in two years later to take things away once again.
My take? Fine the school the equivalent of … oh … a Florida State "sacrificial lamb" paycheck. Don't take hard-earned wins and titles away from the athletes who earned them.