“The National Collegiate Athletic association, after muddling thru 33 years of administrative activity by the side door method of educative principles, is ready to adopt the “big stick” policy of the late Teddy Roosevelt.
“Its December bulletin prepares the way for a new program which will permit infliction of penalties of drastic consequence on erring colleges and universities.
“In other words, the NCAA has ordered itself a set of boxing gloves instead of another pair of mittens.”
— Associated Press, Dec. 30, 1939
By Gaylon Krizak
A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to pick up that big stick. Some folks fought a few hundred bigger battles with much larger sticks and called it World War II. Perhaps you read about it.
It would be almost 14 more years before the NCAA actually donned the gloves and came out counterpunching suspected scofflaws. And it was not (officially) until Jan. 8, 1954, that any of its blows landed.
The phrase is commonplace these days, but before that day no NCAA football program had found itself “on probation.” Yet by the end of that day’s business, two notable programs found themselves penalized for “major infractions.”
One received a multiyear sentence. The other received a figurative slap on the wrist.
One was a regional power on the rise; its heyday would not come on a national scale for another two decades.
The other, in the minds of many, merely was synonymous with college football.
Arizona State
Sports penalized: Football (officially; in fact, all Sun Devils athletes were ruled ineligible for NCAA championship competition in the 1953-54 school year)
Infractions summary: “FINANCIAL AID. IMPERMISSIBLE RECRUITING: transportation; tryouts. OUTSIDE FUNDS”
What happened? Arizona State College was the first school to claim a double-standard between NCAA haves and have-nots. It hardly would be the last.
An August 1953 story from the Associated Press detailed the transgressions: “The school was charged with permitting pay to athletes, transporting prospective players to the campus for tryouts, and the Sun Angel foundation accused of collecting money to give financial aid to athletes.”
Jim Coles, then the Sun Angel president, said he was puzzled by the severity of the penalty. Walter Bimson, president of the board of regents, said the NCAA action was “arbitrary, unfair and too severe … taken without consideration of all the actors involved.” School president Dr. Grady Gammage blamed the mess on “disgruntled former employees.”
Nonetheless, Gammage acknowledged: “We know that there were infractions of the NCAA regulations. Therefore, the constructive thing for us to do is to accept the decision and put our house in order — which we have done.”
For the defending Border Conference champion Sun Devils, that meant making the best of a 10-game schedule that began Sept. 19 against the San Diego Naval Air Training Center. To add further insult, at least indirectly, the NCAA had voted before the season to return to one-platoon football, hampering teams such as the Sun Devils built for more specialized play.
An injury to halfback Dick Curran in the opening 19-14 loss to the Sailors set the tone for a disappointing 4-5-1 season. Arizona State’s first opening-game loss since 1938 came after it took a 14-12 halftime lead, but faded noticeably down the stretch, especially along the line.
The first four losses came by a combined 17 points, but the fifth proved the biggest blow of all: a 35-0 shellacking by in-state rival Arizona in Tempe. The Sun Devils had beaten the Wildcats 20-18 in Tucson the year before as part of a four-game winning streak in the rivalry, but before a crowd of 16,000 plus a statewide TV audience, UA got its revenge, outgaining ASC 538-112.
Gammage after the game expressed full confidence in coach Clyde Smith, with a United Press story adding: “NCAA officials recently praised efforts of Smith, former Indiana University coach, and college administrators to carry out an athletic program in line with NCAA regulations.”
But things did not improve appreciably in year two of the probation. After a 5-2 start, Smith’s Sun Devils dropped their final three games, capped by a 54-14 humiliation at Arizona. Smith left coaching to become the ASC athletic director after the season, replaced by a rising young assistant from Michigan State who beat out a list of candidates that included Ara Parseghian and Bill Yeoman.
His name? Dan Devine.
Notre Dame
Sports penalized: Football
Infractions summary: “Improper tryouts.”
What happened? “Notre Dame’s troubles,” as explained in an August 1953 Associated Press story, “may stem largely from the notorious Charlie Sticka incident. Sticka, a standout freshman fullback from little Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., showed up on the Notre Dame campus last January and Trinity officials immediately yelled ‘robbery.’ Embarrassed, Notre Dame told Sticka he was ineligible to play for the Irish. Whereupon Sticka went back to Trinity.”
When the NCAA hammer came down, the Notre Dame reaction was immediate and predictable. Said school executive vice president Rev. Edmund P. Joyce: “It is ironic to be subjected to public opprobrium for a minor offense which was decisively handled on the university level. There are many areas of really serious abuses in the intercollegiate athletic world toward which the NCAA could have much more profitably turned its attention.”
The penalty? Merely a public reprimand. No sanctions, no bowl penalty (which wouldn’t have mattered; the Irish were in the midst of a 45-year self-imposed postseason rejection period).
The slap on the wrist didn’t faze voters in the preseason Associated Press poll: Notre Dame was a runaway choice for No. 1, well ahead of defending national champion Michigan State. And that was where the Irish remained until Nov. 21, when Notre Dame was fortunate to play thrice-beaten Iowa to a 14-14 tie in South Bend, Ind. Irish players feigned injuries to stop the clock before each ND touchdown, one just before halftime, the other with eight seconds left in the game.
On Oct. 24, the Irish ended No. 4 Georgia Tech’s 31–game unbeaten streak with a 27-14 victory at South Bend. But Notre Dame received a scare when coach Frank Leahy collapsed during halftime. He was taken to a hospital with what was described as a “muscular spasm” in the lower chest. Leahy coached his team from home via television the next week, guiding the Irish to a 38-7 rout of Navy, and was back in charge completely when Notre Dame nipped Penn 28-20.
Johnny Lattner, a standout halfback on both sides of the ball, edged Minnesota’s Paul Giel by 56 votes in Heisman Trophy voting. He became the fourth Notre Dame player to win the Heisman in Leahy’s 11 years.
The Irish finished 9-0-1 and ranked No. 2 behind 10-0 Maryland. Leahy called his squad “the greatest football team Notre Dame ever has had.” Then, after weeks of denying that he planned to retire, Leahy left on Jan. 31, 1954, citing the advice of his doctors after what later was revealed as a pancreatic attack during the Georgia Tech game.
His overall record of 107–13–9 was good for an .864 winning percentage, second all-time only to Knute Rockne’s .881; Leahy was 87-11-9 at Notre Dame.
Notre Dame went with Terry Brennan — at 25, the youngest head coach in the country — whose first team finished 8-1 and ranked No. 4. His second was 8-2, but a 42-20 season-ending loss to Southern Cal was a harbinger of things to come. Brennan and his successor, Joe Kuharich, combined to go 49-41 in nine seasons before Notre Dame hired Ara Parseghian and returned to its accustomed status as a perennial national power.
Parseghian’s successor, by the way? Dan Devine.
It would be another 17 years before Notre Dame football received another “major infractions” penalty, and another 28 years after that. Only the 1999 violations drew a tangible penalty: the loss of one scholarship each in the 2000-01 and ’01-02 academic years.
Arizona State, meanwhile, holds the dubious distinction (or rather co-holds with SMU) as the most penalized NCAA Division I program. Seven more “major infractions” probations — four of which were specific to football — would follow the first one, the most recent coming in 2005.
Proof that some things never change? The 2005 NCAA infractions summary cited “(i)mpermissible benefits; impermissible financial aid; unethical conduct and a lack of institutional control. Impermissible benefits and financial aid provided to a football student-athlete by a former member of the institution’s athletics compliance staff.”