The NCAA has uncovered severe violations from the Atlantic 10 that have hurt the conference’s 2025 men’s basketball season, which have led the NCAA to strip the A10 of it’s automatic-bid to the 2025 NCAA Tournament.
According to the NCAA offices in Indianapolis, “The Atlantic 10 conference has been found guilty of multiple violations according to the NCAA bylaws. We are unfortunately forced to hand down a harsh punishment of stripping the conference of its 2025 automatic bid toward the 2025 NCAA Tournament.”
The Atlantic 10 office was shocked to hear of the punishment from the NCAA.
“We are deeply disappointed in the NCAA for this harsh punishment,” said A10 public affairs coordinator George Ham. “We as a conference pride ourselves on our integrity on how we handle our highly competitive men’s basketball season.”
The violations uncovered by the NCAA involve tampering with the 2024 conference tournament multiple times.
The NCAA took this drastic action in response to attempts by the A10 to influence the results of games. These attempts range from prematurely shooting their load of confetti in an attempt to bring bad vibes upon Duquesne, to paying an evil witch to cast an evil curse on Dayton ensuring they will never win an Atlantic 10 Tournament, and to what the suspension explanation simply referred to as “Siegel Center Refs.”
“Frankly, this level of playing favorites and trying to influence who wins games is only acceptable at the power conference level, where our TV and betting partners genuinely want brand names like Duke, Kansas, and NC State to have easy paths to victory so ratings are better,” said NCAA President Charlie Baker.
Baker continued: “What makes the Atlantic 10’s acts so abhorrent is that no one really cares whether Duquesne or VCU represents the conference in the Atlantic 10 outside of insane VCU fans and Duquesne fans who had never known happiness until this year. Because of this, we felt we had to come down extra hard on the conference and strip it of its automatic bid. This will ensure that a deserving 18-15 Big 10 team will make the tournament next year, as an added bonus.”
The most conspiratorial twitter account in the A10, @Flyerfan010621, tweeted “I knew it!” in response to the news.
Around the country, multiple power conference commissioners weighed in on the news, including SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. “We applaud the NCAA on holding the Atlantic 10 accountable for their actions. We look forward to replacing an A10 conference tournament champ with a really good 13-17 Vanderbilt team next season.”
Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti wasted no time commenting on the situation via a zoom call with A10 Talk. “We have been waiting for Commissioner Baker to do something about that damn league for a long time,” Petitti said while popping off a bottle of champagne. “It’s about time the NCAA started to bully the bullies like the A10 and reward the little guys like the Big Ten, ACC, SEC, and the Big 12.” Sankey was also seen on this zoom call with a glass of champagne in the background as well.
When asked if they were going to appeal the sanctions from the NCAA, the A10 responded with, “Whatever power you think the NCAA has….we have less.”
As a result, the A10 is mulling different solutions for its conference tournament champion for 2025. We have been told by the league office that solutions include the champion being given an auto bid into the NIT, CBI or CIT (with programs still having to pay their own way into those tournaments), or each player and coach on the winning team’s roster be given a $25 gift card to Ruby Tuesday.
A10 Associate to the Commissioner Bernie McBoyd spoke to the possible solutions, saying “We are talking to other tournaments to see if our tournament champion can join them if they don’t get an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, so for right now, the front runner is definitely the Ruby Tuesday gift cards. We have a long standing relationship with Ruby Tuesday, where we conduct the conference schedules and count the paper ballots mailed in for the post season awards. Their establishments are well equipped to handle any team in the A10.”
Several A10 programs have responded differently to the news.
The A10 office has told us that, “Because of this news, UMass is actively working with the MAC to join in Winter 2024, ahead of their July 1st agreement. Dayton and VCU have both been contacted by the Big East, as the conference has expressed their sympathies and has reengaged in expansion talks with both A10 programs out of respect.”
Even some of the A10 coaches are handling the news differently. According to sources, after hearing this news Frank Martin flew directly to the NCAA offices in Indianapolis and waited in the parking lot preparing to bare knuckle box Charlie Baker.
Stay tuned in the coming weeks as we update you more with this story as we gain more information.
Photo credit: Hunter Hensel, A10 Talk
5 Comments
Happy April Fools Day Chris!!!!
Hopefully I didn’t get you too bad!
This was very cleverly written. Thanks for the laughs.
It was the $25 gift card to Ruby Tuesday when I knew something was up.
Hilarious. Got a few nice laughs from it… Well, done.