r/CFB • u/ShamusJohnson13 Alabama • South Carolina • Sep 13 '19
History The Last Forfeit in College Football
“There are two instances in which NCAA statisticians change official won-lost records. They are: 1. When a case ruled on by the NCAA Committees on Infractions include penalties of forfeits or vacancies; or 2. By NCAA executive action”
The forfeit is not something seen nowadays in College Football. Sure, there are vacated wins, where a team that finishes the year 10-2 will have those wins erased, but a forfeit works a little differently. Instead of 0-2, that team would finish 0-12 if the NCAA ordered those games to be forfeited. Like I said, it doesn’t happen often nowadays. In fact, a forfeit hasn’t occurred during the 21st century. The last game to officially have been forfeited was on September 12th, 1998. Since it is the 21st anniversary of the occasion, let’s talk about it...
The Game
It was a rather cool day in College Station, relatively speaking. The number 17 Texas A&M squad was coming off of a 23-14 loss against the number 2 ranked Florida State Seminoles while Louisiana Tech had just been shellacked by Nebraska the prior week. Nobody expected A&M to lose to a Tech team that would wind up 7-5 at the end of the season. But that’s exactly what the Aggies did.
Technically.
Texas A&M would start the game 21-0 and wind up winning the game 28-7. So how the hell did Texas A&M lose? Well, it’s simple: they had an academically ineligible player playing on the field: D'Andre Hardeman.
Hardeman had a fantastic game for the Aggies: 79 rushing yards and 3 touchdowns. Two years prior, he had rushed for 669 yards and 17 touchdowns, so this wasn’t just a flash in the pan player. He was a bona fide star for the Aggies. After a bit of a down year in 1997 he looked to come back with a vengeance in 1998.
It would not come to pass.
The Forfeit
On September 23rd, Texas A&M announced that it would forfeit their victory over Louisiana Tech on September 12th. Coach Slocum had already suspended Hardeman before their game against Southern Miss. The athletic director of A&M, Wally Groff, would go on to suspend Hardeman the entire season, stating “A&M officials discovered an inadvertent clerical error in the posting of grades at the registrar’s office which resulted in Hardeman being cleared for competition... There was no impropriety in the erroneous posting of the grades. The error was clerical in nature and was made outside of the athletic department. Besides this clerical error, no violation of NCAA and Big 12 rules was found.″
Essentially, Groff was declaring that nobody was at fault for what was essentially a typo. While it’s unlikely A&M would have lost to Tech had Hardeman not played, it can’t be guaranteed (especially since he accounted for all three of A&M’s touchdowns). So, now the game sits in the record books as an A&M loss, one where they outscored Louisiana Tech 28-7.
Aftermath
Louisiana Tech would have a rather meh season, finishing it by being shellacked 63-30 by Tulane. Without the forfeit, they would have finished the season 6-6. With the newly acquired win, they finished 7-5 without a bowl appearance.
Texas A&M never took a poll hit from the “loss”, with the polls that came out on September 28th placing them 18th instead of 17th. They would string together 9 straight wins after Tech, including over Nebraska, defeat Kansas State in the Big 12 Championship and then fall to Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl. They refuse to accept the forfeit as a loss to this day.
D'Andre Hardeman, while he would be reinstated to the school in 1999, would never play another down for the Aggies. As of 2015, he was a mechanic for the city of Houston and personal trainer.
Wally Groff would relinquish his position as Athletic Director on December 31st, 2002, largely due to the new president of the university.
Sources
https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/texas-am/1998-schedule.html
https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/louisiana-tech/1998-schedule.html
https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/players/dandre-hardeman-1.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hardeman-ineligible-am-forfeits/
https://apnews.com/58ff7380d4825a56789abee2f1a8a94d
http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/ForSIDs/Policies.pdf
https://texags.com/s/18044/aggie-flashback-with-former-am-rb-dandre-tiki-hardeman
https://www.chron.com/sports/college/article/Groff-steps-down-as-AD-at-A-M-2088292.php
https://apnews.com/917ed9298eec5c69e8439db2666f42b5
EDIT: Since Grambling forfeited a game in 2013, it's more accurate to say this game is the last FBS forfeiture.
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Sep 13 '19
This was a super interesting post until it reminded me that I graduated high school 22 years ago.
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u/Wolf482 Oklahoma State • Michigan Sep 13 '19
YOU'RE A MAN YOU'RE 40
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u/wjack12 Texas Tech Red Raiders Sep 13 '19
T. Boone Pickens is gonna make sure he’s got haircut money
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u/mlorusso4 Ohio State • Baltimore Sep 13 '19
Holy hell. Could you imagine if a team played an ineligible player nowadays? The NCAA would absolutely murder Mizzou
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u/readonlypdf Georgia • Clean Old Fashioned… Sep 14 '19
think about what /r/cfb would do to Mizzou, it'd be 100x worse than Tennessee
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u/OculusRises Clemson Tigers • Orange Bowl Sep 13 '19
Interesting story OP. When I originally opened this post, I was expecting to see a question regarding the rules surrounding forfeiture, and I was preparing to comfort a Kansas flair for a potential loss to Boston College, but alas, that preparation was not needed. Kudos.
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u/ShamusJohnson13 Alabama • South Carolina Sep 13 '19
I actually didn't intend to write this up until about two hours ago. I just happened to stumble across forfeits, noticed this was the last forfeit and thought that I absolutely had to share this with the community.
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u/Honestly_ rawr Sep 13 '19
I’m confused by the title, how does this differ from examples like 2013 Grambling State? They had to forfeit the Jackson State game because of the player mutiny over conditions.
Should this have been forfeiture?
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u/ShamusJohnson13 Alabama • South Carolina Sep 13 '19
Ah, I wasn't aware of that one. Last FBS forfeit then.
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u/Honestly_ rawr Sep 13 '19
That works!
Plus 2017 D3 Oxy famously canceled the final 4 games of the season because they ran out of players
Just this season a lower division team had to cancel their home opener because the other team couldn’t field enough players.
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Sep 13 '19
because they ran out of players
They know those things aren't supposed to be expendable right?
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u/ShamusJohnson13 Alabama • South Carolina Sep 13 '19
Don't tell that to the Soviet Union
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u/MontlakeJake Washington Huskies • Auburn Tigers Sep 13 '19
The Red Army ain't played nobody, PAAAAAAAAAAAWL
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u/TigerExpress Auburn Tigers Sep 14 '19
Funny given that during the planning for the eventually cancelled Glasnost Bowl between USC and Illinois in the Soviet Union, one of the first questions Soviet officials, unfamiliar with gridiron football, had for the folks at Raycom organizing the game was "How many are killed each game?"
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Sep 13 '19
It's so much easier to just throw them away and buy new compared to refurbishing them yourself
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u/ShamusJohnson13 Alabama • South Carolina Sep 13 '19
Yeesh I missed out on a lot. It's still rather interesting that this is the last FBS forfeiture, especially since it happened over two decades ago and seemed to be far more common then.
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u/Honestly_ rawr Sep 13 '19
It's way more dramatic at FBS because there's an order-of-magnitude more money involved.
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u/thinkB4WeSpeak Utah Utes • Yale Bulldogs Sep 13 '19
Both the Oxy Tigers and Grambling Tigers. I'm seeing a trend here.
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u/stripes361 Virginia Cavaliers • Navy Midshipmen Sep 13 '19
That almost happened to my freshman football team. Started the season with 40 freshmen, were down to under 20 by the end of the year due to injuries and maybe a couple kids dropping. It got so bad that I got playing time.
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Sep 13 '19
Well Mark Helfrich forfeited all sorts of wins in his last two years. There's genuinely no other way a team up 31 points at the half could have lost. Yup, forfeit.
Kidding aside that "clerical error" sounds sketchy as all hell
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u/Dog_Lawyer_DDS Florida Gators • West Florida Argonauts Sep 13 '19
he must have studied at the Ron Zook institute of prevent defense
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u/v_cats_at_work Iowa State Cyclones • LSU Tigers Sep 13 '19
They refuse to accept the forfeit as a loss to this day.
This checks out. Wikipedia lists it as a win with a footnote, a footnote which was edited in today.
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u/Pikachu1989 Nebraska Cornhuskers • 東京大学 (Tokyo) Warriors Sep 13 '19
So basically we beat Louisiana Tech while Texas A&M technically lost that game. Crazy to see that, but hey I’ll take it. Especially when Tim Rattay broke the school record for most passing yards against a Nebraska team 2 weeks prior.
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u/Houstonearler Texas Longhorns Sep 13 '19
Didn’t A&M lose to Louisiana Tech back in the 90s and their players blamed it on Tupac being murdered causing them to be distracted?
Yes. See this article:
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u/vassago77379 Texas Tech Red Raiders Sep 13 '19
One if the first NCAA football games that was out was playable on PC like back in 98 or 97, some shit like that. If your computer jammed up or rebooted while you were playing a game it forfeited the game and rang it up as a 1-0 loss.
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u/soonerfreak Oklahoma Sooners • /r/CFB Patron Sep 13 '19
I don't think this is correct, pretty sure the last forfeit was Texas Tech @ Oklahoma on 11/22/2008.
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Sep 13 '19
Didn’t Ohio State forfeit the 2016 Fiesta Bowl?
(Great post, OP)
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u/tmothy07 Ohio State • /r/CFB Poll Veteran Sep 13 '19
I was so confused until I remembered there were two 2016 Fiesta Bowls in one of which we walked all over Notre Dame and then also that other one you're referencing
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u/mapbc Ohio State Buckeyes Sep 13 '19
I think it was vacated. Like it never happened, rather than surrendered as a loss.
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u/kingcal Ohio State Buckeyes • Toledo Rockets Sep 13 '19
I was gonna say The Game last year.
Michigan just completely folded in the second half.
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u/hells_cowbells Mississippi State • Paper Bag Sep 13 '19
The forfeits piss me off. We had to forfeit 18 wins in the late 70s, including two Egg Bowl wins. We had a player who had gotten some free clothes from a local store. We were told by the NCAA that he could continue to play while the investigation continued. After it was all over, they made us forfeit every game he played in because he was ineligible.
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u/RealBenWoodruff Alabama Crimson Tide • /r/CFB Brickmason Sep 13 '19
Alabama forfeited the 1993 season except for their bowl win over North Carolina.
1-12 with the one win being a bowl game is the most Alabama thing ever.
Yes it was thirteen games even back then with an 11 game season because the SEC already had a championship game. It was Alabama vs Florida naturally.
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Sep 13 '19
It might not be a forfeit in the technical sense, but let's not forget the time Auburn paid half a mil to back out of a game against eventual undefeated FSU. War Damn Chicken.
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u/The_Tic-Tac_Kid Kansas Jayhawks • Hateful 8 Sep 13 '19
“There are two instances in which NCAA statisticians change official won-lost records. They are: 1. When a case ruled on by the NCAA Committees on Infractions include penalties of forfeits or vacancies; or 2. By NCAA executive action”
Which is why the official record for KU-MU is 56-55-9 no matter what lies Missouri might tell.
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u/CheniereSwampMonster LSU Tigers • Paderborn UNIcorns Sep 13 '19
Got it. Louisiana Tech > Texas A&M