Chronology Of The Florida Football Scandal c.1984

crosscreekcooter

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http://articles.chicagotribune.com/...-florida-supreme-court-rules-florida-releases
National signing day is coming soon, then it's gone be dryer than Hillary Clinton for months. Let's relive some Flawduh history.

August 25, 1985 Chicago Tribune

December--Charley Pell is hired from Clemson to replace Doug Dickey as Florida`s football coach.

1979

December--Pell`s first season at Florida ends 0-10-1.

1982

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October--After hearing reports that 13 of 70 alleged NCAA violations at Clemson occurred in his two years there, Pell asks Florida faculty to investigate his program.

November--Pell receives two-year contract extension (through 1986 season) and 10 percent raise (to $65,855). He signs the extension the following June. Dec. 6--NCAA notifies Florida that its football program is under preliminary inquiry.

1983

February--The St. Petersburg Times, in the first report of a lengthy investigation of athletic improprieties at Florida, reveals that ``hundreds of thousands`` of dollars in players` complimentary tickets were scalped to Florida boosters. The paper will later concentrate on the poor academic record of Florida football players.

June--NCAA levies sanctions on Clemson`s football program--the defending national champions--stripping 10 scholarships a year for 2 years and banning bowl or TV appearances for the same period.

December--Gator Bowl win gives Florida 9-2-1 record and a No. 6 national ranking, the first time Gators have finished in Top 10.

1984

Feb. 11--Pell hires Oklahoma assistant coach Galen Hall as his offensive coordinator.

Aug. 26--Pell submits his letter of resignation, saying ``the drive to win under the circumstances of a few years ago led me to make some mistakes.`` Aug. 27--Incoming university president Marshall Criser and outgoing president Robert Marston accept the resignation and grant Pell`s request to finish the season ``to mitigate the damage to the student/athletes in the program.`` When asked why he didn`t fire Pell immediately, Criser cites right of due process, because results of NCAA probe are not complete.

Sept. 1--Criser is sworn in as Florida`s eighth president.

Sept. 4--The university files suit to block release of documents related to the investigation under the Florida Public Records Law.

Sept. 6--Florida Supreme Court rules the documents must be released. Florida releases 1,700 pages, including in-house interviews at which notes were taken.

Sept. 11--NCAA delivers its official letter of inquiry, citing 107 violations involving cash inducements, scalping complimentary tickets, a slush fund, illegal room and board and spying on opponents. Criser writes apologies to presidents of seven schools spied upon and offers forfeits of the six that were victories.

Sept. 16--Criser fires Pell. Hall takes over as interim coach of a team with a 1-1-1 record.
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Sept. 18--By working ``virtually day and night,`` Florida delivers its 356-page response to the NCAA violations. The university informs assistant coaches Dwight Adams and Joe Kines their contracts will be terminated at season`s end.

Oct. 23--NCAA bans Florida from bowls and TV for two years, reduces scholarships for incoming players by 10 a year for two years, and in an unprecedented move, reduces total number of players on scholarship to 85 for 1985 and 75 for 1986.
November--Florida appeals the NCAA sanctions.

Nov. 17--On the morning of the Kentucky game, Hall is named coach and given a four-year contract. Florida beats Kentucky to win its first Southeastern Conference title in 53 years.

Nov. 20--The SEC denies Florida the 1985 Sugar Bowl berth that goes to the conference champion.

Dec. 1--A win over Florida State gives the Gators a 9-1-1 record (8-0 under Hall). Kines and Adams are fired.

1985

January--Final football polls give Florida two firsts (New York Times computer poll and Sporting News rankings) and a third (AP).

Jan. 13--The NCAA denies Florida`s appeal.

Apr. 3--SEC executive committee, by a 5-1 vote, declares Florida to be conference champion.

May 30--The presidents of SEC`s football-playing schools, by a 6-4 vote, reverse executive committee and strip title from Florida.

June 3--Criser says ``we shall continue to proclaim the 1984 team as SEC champs.``

June--Several boosters give Pell surprise dinner party in Gainesville and present him with a $24,000 Lincoln Town Car.
 

ThreatMatrix

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Meh, 107 violations the majority of which were free t-shirts. And skunking and ticket scalping were de rigueur at the time.
I'm keeping my 1984 SEC champs coke bottles.
 

Windy City Gator

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August 1984 was my first semester at UF after xfer from Palm Beach Jr. College. I was in the J school and C+ Sid required us to have subscriptions to the Gville Sun. If my memory serves me correctly, out of those 107 allegations some were pinned to George Steinbrenner. Also, I believe that former St. Thomas Aquinas kicker who went to Michigan Pat Moon I think his name was blew part of the whistle on the program. It was a CRAZY first semester in Hogtown...but by far my most favorite football season and team. Went to my first cocktail party and saw the boys end a six year losing streak with a shutout 27-0 and the week before stuffed Bo 24-3 and finished the season by going to the erector set in a driving rainstorm where I was arrested after the game for carrying a piece of the wooden south bleachers...had to spend the night in beautiful Leon County jail. Good times.
 

crosscreekcooter

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Pell got the football program kicked off with some good booster money for facility expansion from Wendy's Dave Thomas, George Steinbrenner and Ben Hill Griffin.
 

OllieGator

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I started at UF in the fall of '84. Hey welcome to probation!
 

Chomper

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Pell > Hall > Spurrier. One has to wonder how all of this would have played out if Pell had not lost his job. Sometimes it really is darkest before dawn.
 

Swamp Donkey

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, reduces total number of players on scholarship to 85 for 1985 and 75 for 1986.
So, it was like having Fooley in charge?

We havent been north of 75 scholarship players (no, walkons dont count) since Fooley announced the "4 year guaranteed scholarship" thing.
 

gatormandan

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Pell > Hall > Spurrier. One has to wonder how all of this would have played out if Pell had not lost his job. Sometimes it really is darkest before dawn.

Well, we should be in good shape then. Things have been very dark for some time....
 

MADGator

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I started in Summer B in '83. I was there for all that crap. I remember a bunch of us gathered around the TV in the kitchen on our floor at Hume Hall watching the press conference when we were denied the Sugar Bowl. It was kind of a double punch to the groin because I was in the Pride Of The Sunshine and missing out on New Years Eve on Bourbon Street was, well, disappointing.
 

crosscreekcooter

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So, it was like having Fooley in charge?

We havent been north of 75 scholarship players (no, walkons dont count) since Fooley announced the "4 year guaranteed scholarship" thing.

Actually it was just like having Foley in charge. He was Associate Athletic Director from 1981-1986.
 

78

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Pell > Hall > Spurrier. One has to wonder how all of this would have played out if Pell had not lost his job. Sometimes it really is darkest before dawn.
Two words.

Jeremy Foley.

Now you tell me why.
 

78

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I hope you guys took the time to read the Chicago Tribune story linked by Cooter. I'd forgotten about it. What a great piece from Phil Hersh. It's chockfull of goodies. The football was so colorful back then.

I'm going to quote out a few memorable graphs. There are so many.

In late June, several of them had a surprise party for Charley Pell, the coach whose repeated indifference toward NCAA rules had helped win an SEC title, a two-year ban on bowl and TV appearances and what at the time were the most severe scholarship cutbacks ever mandated by the NCAA. At the party, they presented Pell with a $24,000 Lincoln Town Car.

Said Criser, who fired Pell after three games last season: ``I was surprised and embarrassed. I don`t have any control over those people.``

Said Gainesville booster Charles LaPradd, who contributed to the gift fund: ``Charley Pell did more for the University of Florida than any other person--coach, scientist, dean or whatever--who has ever been at the University of Florida. It organized the alumni, and he created a spirit within the university that no one else has ever fostered.``

I had Roosenraad for a couple JM classes. Very candid guy.

Fundraising, for both athletics and academics, was a special concern and talent of Robert Marston, the president whom Criser succeeded last Sept. 1. In 1979, when Bill Carr became athletic director and Pell coached his first season, the athletic department had a deficit of $700,000. That has long since turned to profit.

``With the previous administration, Pell ran the university,`` said Jon Roosenraad, chairman of Florida`s journalism department. ``Marston was a fundraiser who said, in effect: `We`ve got to have a winning football program. I don`t care what you do, come up with a winner.` Pell wasn`t accountable to the athletic director or the president.``

Does any of this sound vaguely familiar?

Many of the violations were minor--buying a T-shirt, buying a meal--but at least half were serious: using cash inducements to get players, scalping complimentary tickets at a profit for players and coaches, having a slush fund, providing illegal room and board and spying on opponents. After being granted immunity against loss of eligibility, All-America offensive tackle Lomas Brown admitted getting cash, having his tickets sold for cash and getting illegal lodging for himself and his parents. All-America linebacker Lorenzo Johnson admitted accepting money and scalping his tickets.

Marshall Criser turned his back.

Criser and Marston agreed to let Pell finish the season, but Criser fired him and named offensive coordinator Galen Hall the interim coach once the university received the official list of violations. Florida also told assistants Dwight Adams and Joe Kines they would be fired at the end of the year. Kines has since been hired by SEC rival Alabama, which has bemused Floridians, to say the least.

``The lawyers cut a deal with the NCAA, and I voluntarily resigned at the pleasure of the president,`` Pell told The Tribune in a recent interview. ``He (Criser) gave me his word he was going to do certain things and he didn`t do them.``

Florida's new public records law doomed UF and Pell. The St. Pete Times swooped in like vultures. I know. I was in its newsroom.

``The NCAA had been taking a licking everywhere in the courts, and they wanted to win one,`` Pell said of the Florida penalties. ``The University of Florida was a convenient, willing and important tool for the NCAA.

``The University of Illinois case could have made just as much national headlines or should have made more, but the press in Chicago did not get full public disclosure the way they did in Florida. The Florida case could have been diluted if it was in the same situation as Illinois.``

Although few of Illinois` violations were as serious as Florida`s, the situation to which Pell referred was created by the state of Florida`s nearly all-encompassing Public Records Law. It forced the university to release 1,700 pages of documents related to the investigation even before it received the formal notification of violations. That led to what some called trial by newspaper, with its conclusion foregone.

Wild-eyed UF boosters.

LaPradd says he was among those boosters, including George Steinbrenner, who received letters from the university urging them to take precautions about breaking NCAA violations. ``I threw it in the trash,`` LaPradd said. ``I don`t do anything for them but give them some money.``

Gator Boosters Inc., which has some 7,000 members, raised $4 million last year. It is the largest booster group in the Southeastern Conference.

``We`ve got some wild-eyed, diehard boosters who are crazy,`` LaPradd said. ``They spend a lot of time and effort and money and need that ego boost. I don`t need that.``

The position that Florida was doing nothing worse than anyone else

--especially, in Gator fans` minds, the archrival University of Georgia--is widely held in Gainesville.

``The hate that exists for Georgia is unbelievable,`` said Steinbrenner, the majority owner of the New York Yankees, who was found party to two minor violations. ``For Georgia to vote for recalling the trophy when it is on probation in two sports (football and basketball) is unbelievable.``

Another great quote from Roosenraad.
``The SEC championship was a singular goal I couldn`t understand until I got here,`` said journalism chairman Roosenraad, who came to Florida from Michigan State. ``The people were plainly tired of always playing Avis.``

``I`m a realist, and I realize the penalties are going to hurt,`` Hall said. ``But I`m enough of an optimist to think we can still be very good.``

Said Pell: ``The 1985 team will be the best Florida has ever had.``

It may, unfortunately, also be known as the best team money can buy. That is, all too often, the moral to a story in which the only bottom line is victory.
 

crosscreekcooter

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Part of a Franz Beard article he wrote for GatorCountry in 2009
http://www.gatorcountry.com/florida-gators-football/why_i_despise_georgia1/

Florida went on NCAA probation in 1984 for such heinous crimes as assistant coach Dwight Adams giving Dale Dorminey an extra T-shirt during his campus visit and buying him a pack of gum and a Sprite at the Gainesville airport. I’m not making that up. It’s all in the NCAA transcripts.

Not all the crimes were petty. There were some dastardly deeds by Florida boosters who were out of control during those days and the Gators got caught for them and paid the price. However, Florida wasn’t the only school taking its chances outside the law of the NCAA. Florida State got caught for illegal recruiting inducements that same year (Bobby Bowden was the FSU coach … you could look it up) and Georgia got caught up in a major scandal that revolved around 1982 Heisman Trophy winner, Herschel Walker, who allegedly was sold to the highest bidder out of high school. An NCAA investigation hit a stone wall and eventually Georgia lost two scholarships with no bans on television or bowl games. Dooley was chairman of the NCAA’s powerful television committee and to this day, there are rumors that he lobbied long, hard and successfully to keep Georgia out of hot water.

For those who think Dooley is a man of integrity, think again. There is a pattern of run-ins with the NCAA while Dooley was coach and/or athletic director. Georgia got hit with major infractions for football three times (1978, 1982, 1965) while Dooley was the coach and again for football in 1997 while he was the athletic director. The Georgia basketball program got hit for major sanctions under Dooley-hired coaches Hugh Durham (1985) and Jim Harrick (2004).
And then there was Jan Kemp, who blew the whistle on the fraudulent academic support program at Georgia under Dooley in the 1980s. She refused to give athletes passing grades at the insistence of the higher ups in the athletic department and when she complained, she was fired. She sued and was awarded $1.08 million by the jury.
What happened at Georgia is important because in 1984, Florida, got hit with some of the most serious sanctions in NCAA history that included two years without television and severe scholarship reductions. The probation cost Coach Charley Pell his job and cost the Gators the SEC championship. The Gators won the SEC on the field but the Gators were stripped of the championship in a vote of the SEC athletic directors and presidents. Among the leaders of the vote against Florida was Vince Dooley.
In an interview I did with Gator great Wilber Marshall three years ago, Wilber said, “I went to Florida because it was close to home and I’m a mama’s boy. I didn’t go there because they paid me to go but other schools made offers … some big offers … some of the same teams that voted to strip the SEC championship from us in 1984. You would go on recruiting trips and some fat cat booster would let you know what you could expect … that was pretty common then.”
REASON FOUR: Galen Hall was informed that he would be fired as Florida’s football coach just prior to the LSU game in Baton Rouge on October 7, 1989 (Florida won the game, 16-13). Hall’s crime was allegedly paying one month of child support for Jarvis Williams until Williams’ mom could reimburse him. Hall denied that he ever gave money to Williams and the NCAA has yet to prove conclusively that he did. Yet, Florida got a year of probation (served in 1990) with no bowl game.
It’s bad enough that Florida’s probation was dubious, at best, but the alleged incident happened before any of the players who were on that 1990 team arrived on the UF campus. Still, the SEC athletic directors and presidents, in their infinite wisdom, made the Gators ineligible for the SEC championship in 1990 and denied the Gators a chance to go to a bowl game.
Among the leaders of the vote against Florida was Vince Dooley.
That 1990 season was Steve Spurrier’s first year at Florida. Florida had the best record in the SEC and the Gators should have been the SEC champs. There was no bowl game for a team that deserved to be in the Sugar Bowl. Now, take 1968 and add to it 1990.
Do you understand why Spurrier was obsessed with humiliating Georgia any and every chance he got?
I wasn’t around in 1942 but my dad was and until he died in 1986, he took delight in every loss by every Georgia team in any sport all because of that 75-0 game. I was there at the 1968 game and I’ll never forget what Dooley did. I will also never forgive Dooley for twice voting to pour on the sanctions against the Gators. I can’t think of Dooley without the words self-righteous hypocrite coming to mind. Because of Vince Dooley, I will despise Georgia until the day I die. you should, too.
 

78

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Dooley. The doosh who could smile and shake your hand and a second later pile a knife in your back.

The weasel kid you always wanted to beat the crap out of in grade school.
 

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