Ncaa Sanctions Bowl Over Miami For This Season

The Miami Hurricanes, college football’s most notorious team during the past decade, met their match Friday.

The NCAA announced sanctions that will cost Miami a bowl berth this year and a reduction of at least five scholarships each season through 1997.

The penalties are for a financial aid scandal, a play-for-pay scheme and other violations of NCAA rules under former coaches Dennis Erickson and Jimmy Johnson.

School officials described the punishment as fair and ruled out an appeal.

“I’m embarrassed any time I look back and say to myself I could have done a better job,” university president Edward Foote said. “In retrospect, it is clear that we were not providing adequate controls within the department of intercollegiate athletics, which allowed inadvertent as well as conscious violations by some people.”

Miami, 8-3 and ranked 22nd, had been in contention for a berth against Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl and the $3 million that goes with it. Instead, the school’s streak of 12 consecutive major bowl appearances has ended.

Virginia Tech, which tied Miami for the Big East Conference title, now is assured of a major bowl berth. Syracuse, which finished third in the league, will play in the Gator Bowl instead of the Carquest Bowl.

The NCAA placed Miami on three years probation for violations in football, baseball, women’s golf and men’s tennis, but it imposed no limitations on TV appearances.

Miami will lose 13 new football scholarships for the 1996-97 academic year and 11 for 1997-98. The NCAA also adopted as its own penalty Miami’s previous decision to voluntarily reduce its football scholarships from 25 to 18 for the 1995-96 academic year.

The Hurricanes will be limited to a total of 80 scholarships each season through 1997, instead of the usual 85.

The NCAA regards scholarship reductions as perhaps its most effective form of punishment. Washington lost 20 scholarships in 1993-94.