WI Alabama football got the “death penalty” in 2002?

Hālian

Hālian

Disclaimer: I am not an Alabama fan.

For those not watching, or familiar with, college football during the Dubya administration, Alabama football had a tenuous relationship with NCAA rules and bylaws around the turn of the XXI century. In the fourteen years leading up to 2001, the Tide had been involved in four major infractions cases:
  1. In August 1995, the NCAA found four rules violations related to Antonio Langham, as he had signed with an agent in the 1992–93 offseason and allegedly received deferred-payment loans; they put Bama on probation, giving them scholarship reductions and a one-year bowl ban, and forced them to forfeit the eight wins and one tie in which Langham played.
  2. In May 1996, the Tide are stripped of one scholarship for failing to disclose player loans guaranteed by a Birmingham tire shop.
  3. In February 1999, Alabama avoided NCAA sanctions following claims that a former assistant basketball coach, Tyrone Beaman, tried to create a slush fund for recruits. The NCAA warned Alabama that severe penalties could result from any violations over the next five years.
  4. In January 2001, a 1999 scheme to cover for Tennessee prep superstar Albert Means' low test scores by having someone else take the ACT and SAT for him, along with his coaches at Trezevant High in Memphis basically selling him to colleges for $200k (which was covered by Alabama boosters), was uncovered by the NCAA.
In our world, the NCAA refrained from shuttering Alabama football; instead, in February 2002, it handed down five years' probation, a two-year bowl ban, and the removal of 21 scholarships. Kentucky was also given a one-year bowl ban for their part in the Albert Means scandal.

What if, instead, the NCAA had followed through on giving the Crimson Tide the big haircut? How would the SEC and, indeed, major college football as a whole be affected as a result?
 
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Nivek

Hālian said:
In our world, the NCAA refrained from shuttering Alabama football; instead, in February 2002, it handed down five years' probation, a two-year bowl ban, and the removal of 21 scholarships. Kentucky was also given a one-year bowl ban for their part in the Albert Means scandal.

What if, instead, the NCAA had followed through on giving the Crimson Tide the big haircut? How would the SEC and, indeed, major college football as a whole be affected as a result?
Click to expand...
Objectively, that was far worse the death penalty, that only didn't care as Alabama sucked before
 

ejpsan

Alabama would have been in a much better position to come back from the "Death Penalty" then SMU, Alabama was a large public university with an even bigger athletic program with only Auburn University competing against them on an equal footing in the state.
SMU was a small private university with a medium sized athletic program compared to Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Houston, and Baylor.
Other factors include that the SEC was a much stronger conference then the SWC and the SWC was in the process of being dissolved.
There was and still is a very deep booster program that Alabama can tap to weather the Death Penalty, unlike SMU which had some big pocket doners, but not a large pool of boosters to see them through the rough times.
It probably would take at least five years with the right Head Coach and staff to get Alabama back to national contention, but Alabama would have the resources that SMU didn't have.
 
Hālian

Hālian

One thing I only just realized, also, is that, with Alabama out of the picture for anywhere from one to five years, the SEC loses their championship game, as they only have 11 members. Makes you wonder who they'd try to poach… my mind goes to the two former members (Georgia Tech, Tulane), as well as Florida State, who flirted with joining the SEC in the early '90s.
 
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