WVU didn’t want it, but they were in the big minority.
Big East university presidents voted, 13-3, in November to stop enrolling athletes who do not meet the NCAA’s initial eligibility standards. There are no exceptions, which is a major change from the Big East guidelines a year ago.
West Virginia voted against it, while Pitt cast a “yes” vote for the rule, which has been under discussion for more than a year.
“I think this sends a strong statement about where we stand when it comes to the importance of academics in this conference,” Pitt athletic director Jeff Long said. “We support that. We feel it was a very good move at a great time — when we’re coming together as a 16-team conference, the largest in the country.”
The Big East became the fourth Bowl Championship Series league to stop enrolling non-qualifiers, joining the Pacific-10, the Big 12 and the Atlantic Coast Conference.
The Big Ten has no league-wide rule keeping non-qualifiers out. However, if a football team, such as Penn State, accepts a non-qualifier, that player doesn’t receive a scholarship even though he counts against the Nittany Lions’ scholarship limits of 85 total and 25 annually.
The Southeastern Conference allows for a limited number of exceptions spread across all teams at an institution.
There is a sidebar to the article setting out the basics of the standards. The article doesn’t say who the other two schools voting against it, but if I had to hazard a guess I’d bet on Louisville and South Florida, almost by process of elimination.
Cinci is trying to clean up its image. All the private schools would sign-off on it. That would leave Rutgers, UConn, Louisville and USF.
This comes on the heels of the amusing and dumb story of a WVU student actually going to spy on Marshall’s spring practices. Let’s give some credit to Hoopie fans for being upfront about how incredibly stupid this is. It’s Marshall. I realize it’s their in-state rival, and they got stunned by them (again) in basketball this past season, but the fact that any student or even the possibility that a coach even considered the possibility of finding anything useful from spying on spring practice is beyond laughable.
Personally, I suspect the kid goes to WVU’s J-school and was given some bad advice from a questionable source.
