NCAA rejects USC appeal to reduce football sanctions

Associated Press

los angeles

Southern California acknowledges its football program committed NCAA violations while building a West Coast dynasty over the past decade. The Trojans simply believe last year’s nearly unprecedented punishment didn’t fit the crime.

Athletic director Pat Haden wasn’t surprised to learn that the NCAA disagrees.

The NCAA flatly rejected USC’s appeal to reduce sanctions imposed on its storied football program, keeping in place the harshest penalties leveled against a school in a quarter-century.

USC must serve the second year of its two-year postseason ban this fall, making the Trojans ineligible for the first Pac-12 title game or a bowl game. USC also will lose 30 scholarships over the next three years, giving them just 15 scholarships per season — 10 below the normal yearly limit — until 2015.

Haden led a chorus of exasperated resignation at Heritage Hall after the NCAA’s final ruling on its punitive sanctions for a variety of misdeeds surrounding Heisman Trophy-winning tailback Reggie Bush.

“We have to look at ourselves in the mirror here,” said Haden, who took over the department last July. “We could have and should have done things better.

“We deserve some penalties, but it’s the severity of the penalties that we think are unfair.”

While disappointment spread throughout campus and in the Pac-10 offices upstate, the Trojans also expressed relief their half-decade of NCAA drama finally was over. Haden confirmed USC won’t sue the NCAA to further contest the most extensive sanctions handed out since SMU football was shut down for two years in 1987.