I had never heard of this before and found it interesting.

LINK



8. Louisiana Western gets the death penalty



The largest penalty in NCAA history does not belong to SMU football or Kentucky Basketball, but rather to Southwestern Louisiana (now University of Louisiana at Lafayette). Following a successful 1972–73 season, which saw the Ragin' Cajuns end the season ranked in the top ten, an investigation into alleged violations in the school's men's basketball program turned up a number of results.


The staff was found to have committed multiple recruiting violations and allowing players to receive improper benefits. Most damning was the revelation that the school had falsified documents to allow players who failed to meet the minimum high school GPA requirements to compete in Division I basketball. Among the evidence was a high school transcript where an assistant coach had forged the signature of the principal of one of the player's high schools.


The NCAA took the violations extremely seriously, and issued their harshest penalty in history, banning the school for competition for the next two years. The penalties were noted for being particularly harsh because the school had already been placed on probation in 1968 for violations involving the men's basketball program. While the program would return to modest success, it would never achieve the heights it did prior to the violation.

(07-14-2012 03:39 PM)tyler90wm Wrote:  I had never heard of this before and found it interesting.

LINK



8. Louisiana Western gets the death penalty



The largest penalty in NCAA history does not belong to SMU football or Kentucky Basketball, but rather to Southwestern Louisiana (now University of Louisiana at Lafayette). Following a successful 1972–73 season, which saw the Ragin' Cajuns end the season ranked in the top ten, an investigation into alleged violations in the school's men's basketball program turned up a number of results.


The staff was found to have committed multiple recruiting violations and allowing players to receive improper benefits. Most damning was the revelation that the school had falsified documents to allow players who failed to meet the minimum high school GPA requirements to compete in Division I basketball. Among the evidence was a high school transcript where an assistant coach had forged the signature of the principal of one of the player's high schools.


The NCAA took the violations extremely seriously, and issued their harshest penalty in history, banning the school for competition for the next two years. The penalties were noted for being particularly harsh because the school had already been placed on probation in 1968 for violations involving the men's basketball program. While the program would return to modest success, it would never achieve the heights it did prior to the violation.

There is a lot to this story. Check out http://lightsoutinblackham.com/?page_id=108 . Its a documentary coming out about that particular time in Cajun history. We were the first traditional southern school to integrate African American players on to our team and that didn't sit well with a lot of other southern universities (and because of that, the NCAA as well).