Florida State Finally Waves White Flag, Will Surrender Victories

Sports News - February 8th, 2010 - Written By John Ritter

Florida State University lost every step of the way in it's appellate process of a cheating scandal, and will concede 12 victories from the 2006 and 2007 football seasons. The school will vacate the wins and permantly remove them from Bobby Bowden's all-time record, leaving him with only 377 wins.

Florida State will lose five wins from the 2006 season, and seven from the '07 campaign. NCAA Football coach Bobby Bowden, retired in early December after his third 6-6 regular-season campaign in four years. He stepped away after a thrilling 33-21 win over West Virginia in the Gator Bowl, which put him only five away from Penn State's Joe Paterno for most all-time. Now he is 17 away with that deficit to only increase next season.

The men's basketball team will lose 22 wins during that same span, including two from the NIT, and the women's team will vacate 16.

Three other athletic programs will also see a dip in their record books. The softball team, the second-most significant group in the academic scandal, will lost 32 wins, including two from the ACC Tournament. The baseball team will lose four wins and the men's indoor track and field squad will end up in fourth place overall in the NCAA Championships, two notches lower than their original silver medal finish.

The track and field team will also lose it's 2007 National Championship, which was the second in a string of back-to-back-to-back titles.

The school announced the forfeiture after a two-year long litigation battle against the NCAA, in which they fought to keep most of those wins. FSU president T.K. Wetherell contested the teams ought to be allowed to keep the wins because coaches did not know of the player's involvement. The NCAA was tipped off about a cheating scandal in December of 2007 after a tutor turned himself in for taking an athlete's online exam at the end of the semester.

After some internal prodding by school officials, the NCAA took over the investigation and found that 61 total student-athletes had cheated during a music history online class, allowing tutors to do some or all of their work.