The Illuminated Donkey

R-U-Blah-Blah! Just how pathetic is my alma mater's athletics department? It turns out that we can't even cheat competently.

RU reeling after series of blunders.

The NCAA put [Rutgers] on a two-year probation (14 months of which have been served), took away 20 scholarships (all but four of which already have been cut), and publicly reprimanded it for, well, basically being stupid.
[...]
[NCAA Committee on Infractions chairman Thomas] Yeager said things could have been exponentially worse - if Rutgers had known what it was doing. Usually in a case like this, with such staggering numbers of violations, Yeager said someone is "trying to come up with a scheme to make an end run around the rules."

But not Rutgers. No, Yeager said, this case "ran to competence." Administrators, he said, "lacked appropriate levels of knowledge and expertise." They were, he said, "completely unaware" of NCAA rules. Yeager has spent six years on the NCAA Committee on Infractions. He couldn't remember a single case in which an institution was guilty of such extensive violations without any forethought.

"This one," he said, "is a little bit unique. There's usually some real intent to violate the rules."

Among the more pathetic infractions:

• Three athletes hadn't declared majors by the middle of their junior year.
• A lacrosse player participated in six games in spring, 2001, despite being de-registered from all his classes.
• Twelve athletes had the major "pre-business" on their transcripts, though no Rutgers degree is awarded in pre-business.

Fortunately, this won't affect the Scarlet Knights' football bowl chances, as the team hasn't had a winning record since 1992, and has gone 18-71 over the past eight seasons.