SMU's Said to be Too Harsh Sanctions?

The "death penalty", which is the most strict rule in the NCAA, is allowed to ban a program or team from participating in a sport for a certain period of time. How can it be fair to go against the rule of paying players for whatever reasons? Some people would say it isn't, while others think it shouldn't be a rule. The Southern Methodist University football program received a harsh punishment after violating the NCAA rules when apparently 13 football players were getting paid. SMU has already been on probation six times since 1956, where most of them came from offers of cash. Of the 13 football players being paid, it was up to about $47,000 during the academic year, while eight student athletes continued to get paid from September to December of about $14,000. What makes it OK for SMU to go against the rules and no one else? Turns out it wasn't, and they made sure they received harsh punishments.

After finding about this long term scandal, they made sure that they were the most punished in NCAA history. SMU ended up being punished from the whole 1987 season, which was the first time they ever banned a team for an entire season. The full death penalty rule can allow a team to be banned for two entire seasons if found guilty twice in five years, but they didn't go to that extent. The NCAA also restricted SMU to seven games in the next year, and limited student scholarships throughout the entire probation, which lasts until September 1, 1990.

Senior defensive back, Mark Vincent states, "We really didn't expect them to do this,", "We thought they'd drop the three non-conference games. There's got to be a fairer way than this." What could possible make someone think that cheating should get limited punishments? Why should it be OK to cheat and get away with it? That is absolutely ridiculous, cheating should require the harshest punishments. If it was another team doing this then the SMU football team would be just against it as everyone else. The fact that the severity of the punishments shocked most of the football team means that the NCAA needs to enforce their rules more powerfully. Some people think that they can get away with cheating and going against the rules, but who's fault really is that? The NCAA could be as much to blame for not making the teams realize what they're doing is wrong and that they can't get away with it for as long as they think.