In a shock to no one, Alabama has filed an official appeal with the NCAA over the edict that forced the Crimson Tide football program to vacate 21 wins.
(Vacating wins is so hot right now...)
The university has sent a notice to the NCAA, but will only contest the vacating of wins, not the other sanctions the NCAA handed down over a widespread athletic department scandal over free text books.
The NCAA found that 16 Alabama athletic teams and 201 athletes illegally used their scholarships to get free textbooks and other materials they weren’t entitled to receive. Many times those books were provided to friends and sometimes sold back to the school at a profit.
Of the 201 athletes that violated the rules, 22 were “intentional wrongdoers,” and seven of them were football players. They each obtained more than $100 in supplies for other students.
Alabama is also appealing the vacating of wins in men’s tennis and men’s and women’s track and field.
This will assuredly be another long drawn out appeal where the only people who really win are the lawyers working on the case. While textbooks don’t sound like a smoking gun, when you’ve got 16 teams breaking the same rules and over 200 athletes, you should just be happy that the NCAA didn’t take away any scholarships.