Oklahoma football to forfeit 2005 victories
BOOKMARK CRUSH SHOT SPORTS NCAA FOOTBALL LOCAL TEAM NEWS
Overland Park, KS - Oklahoma’s football team was forced to forfeit its victories from the 2005 season after the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions penalized the university for major violations.
According to the NCAA, the violations involve three football student-athletes receiving payment for work not performed at a Norman, Oklahoma automobile dealership. Those benefits totaled approximately $17,000 in unearned wages.
Those athletes include dismissed quarterback Rhett Bomar and lineman J.D. Quinn.
The committee concluded that the school failed to monitor the employment of football student-athletes. The new violations add two years to the school’s current probationary period and reduction in allowable financial aid.
The school was forced to vacate the records for the 2005 season including a bowl game victory. That year, the Sooners finished with an 8-4 overall record and a 6-2 mark in the Big 12. That included a victory over Oregon in the Holiday Bowl.
The committee said that although there were only three student-athletes involved in the violations, the penalties were deemed significant for several reasons. That included the value of extra benefits provided by a booster and the fact the violations spanned several months, which led to two of those athletes competing while ineligible.
To make matters worse, the university appeared before the same committee a year earlier in relation to a problem with the men’s basketball staff’s telephone contacts. In that situation, the committee said the school didn’t monitor those contacts with prospective student-athletes.
According to the committee, as a regular practice, the two student-athletes clocked in for work, left the dealership, then returned later to clock out of work. On other occasions, one of them would clock the other in or out, so that both would be paid when only one was present. Based on records obtained from the dealership, it was also found that the third student-athlete was also clocked in and paid for times that he did not work, including time that was spent participating in a scrimmage and game.
Due to the violations, the school lost two scholarships through the 2009-10 season.
