The death penalty is the popular term for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)'s power to ban a school from competing in a sport for at least one year. It is colloquially termed the "death penalty" as a nod to capital punishment, being the harshest penalty that an NCAA member school can receive.
It has been implemented only five times: The University of Kentucky basketball program for the 1952–53 season. The basketball program at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and athletically branded as "Louisiana") for the 1973–74 and 1974–75 seasons. The Southern Methodist University football program for the 1987 season. The Division II men's soccer program at Morehouse College for the 2004 and 2005 seasons. The Division III men's tennis program at MacMurray College for the 2005–06 and 2006–07 seasons.
In addition to schools that received the "death penalty" from the NCAA, some schools voluntarily dropped sports programs for extended periods of time due to high-profile scandals. The most notable examples were in 1951, when Long Island University (LIU) shut down its entire athletic program for six years following the involvement of its men's basketball team in a point shaving scandal, and in the 1980s, when two other Division I men's basketball programs, at the University of San Francisco (1982–1985) and Tulane University (1985–1989), self-imposed "death penalties" after revelations of major NCAA violations. The next self-imposed "death penalty" by a Division I school took place in 2015, when Western Kentucky University (WKU) shut down its men's and women's swimming and diving teams after an investigation into alleged hazing.
Current criteria
The NCAA has always had the power to ban an institution from competing in a particular sport. However, in 1985, in response to rampant violations at several schools, the NCAA Council passed the "repeat violator" rule. The rule stipulates that if a second major violation occurs at any institution within five years of being on probation in the same sport or another sport, that institution can be barred from competing in the sport involved in the second violation for either one or two seasons. In cases of particularly egregious misconduct, a school can also be stripped of its right to vote at NCAA conventions for four years. The severity of the penalty led the media to dub it "the death penalty," and the nickname has persisted. However, if the NCAA finds a school has engaged in a "pattern of willful violations," it can look back to when the violations first occurred, even if they are outside the five-year window. It also still has the power to ban a school from competing in a sport without any preliminaries in cases of particularly egregious violations. However, the "repeat violator" rule gave the Infractions Committees of the various NCAA divisions specific instances where they must either bar a school from competing or explain why they chose not to do so.
Division I programs
University of Kentucky basketball, 1952
On October 20, 1951, former Kentucky players Alex Groza, Ralph Beard, and Dale Barnstable were arrested for taking bribes from gamblers to shave points during the National Invitation Tournament game against the Loyola Ramblers in the 1948–49 season. This game occurred during the same year that Kentucky won their second straight NCAA title under Adolph Rupp. The arrests were linked to a wider investigation of point shaving in college basketball that initially involved the City College of New York (CCNY) but soon spread to several other major basketball powers of the day. Rupp and the university were criticized by the presiding judge, Saul Streit, for creating an atmosphere for the violations to occur and for "failing in his duty to observe the amateur rules, to build character, and to protect the morals and health of his charges". Senior center Bill Spivey, a freshman on the 1948 unit, was charged with perjury due to discrepancies between his testimony and former teammates who claimed he was involved in the scheme as well. While he was acquitted, he was barred from ever playing for the Wildcats again. NBA president Maurice Podoloff banned all players involved in the scandal from ever playing in the NBA. Spivey eventually sued the NBA in 1960, but accepted a $10,000 settlement when it became apparent that he would be too old to be a viable prospect by the time he would have gone to trial.