NCAA Approves University’s Request to Begin Men’s Basketball Scholarship Reductions This Season; Only Five Scholarship Reductions Remain After 2015-16

Syracuse University today announced that the chair of the NCAA Committee on Infractions has approved the University’s request to begin serving the Men’s Basketball scholarship penalty this season. As a result, after the 2015-16 season, only five scholarships remain from the eight scholarship penalty.

In March, the Committee on Infractions imposed a scholarship reduction penalty requiring the Men’s Basketball program to forfeit a total of 12 scholarships over four years. Following the University’s successful appeal in November, that penalty was reduced to eight scholarships over four years.

In October, while its appeal was pending, the University voluntarily forfeited three scholarships for the current 2015-16 season. Chancellor Kent Syverud, in a Dec. 23 letter, requested that the Committee on Infractions count these three scholarships against the eight scholarship penalty.

In his letter, the Chancellor noted that the “University has taken the recent major infractions case and resulting penalties very seriously” and “that applying the scholarship reductions as we have proposed will hold Syracuse University fully accountable for the violations that occurred without causing undue harm to student-athletes by withholding a scholarship unnecessarily.”

The chair of the NCAA Committee on Infractions, Greg Sankey, notified the University last week that the NCAA will apply these three scholarships to the eight scholarship penalty. As a result, only five scholarships remain to be forfeited after the current 2015-16 season:

• 2016-17 academic year: two scholarships
• 2017-18 academic year: two scholarships
• 2018-19 academic year: one scholarship

More information about the University’s response to the March 2015 NCAA report can be found here.