NCAA appeal hearing set for Jan. 22

USC’s hearing before the NCAA Infractions Appeal Committee has been scheduled for Jan. 22 in Indianapolis, athletic director Pat Haden announced Thursday.

USC is appealing June’s NCAA-levied sanctions that included a two-year bowl ban and a loss of 30 scholarships over three years. The school was penalized, in part, as a result of  improper benefits received by two former student-athletes – Reggie Bush and O.J. Mayo – from 2004-2008.

According to the NCAA’s findings, Bush and his parents were found to have received thousands of dollars worth of “extra benefits” from agents and sports marketers, including free rent at a suburban San Diego home.

School officials allege that the penalties were “excessive” and have asked in its appeal, which was filed in June, for the two-year postseason ban to be reduced to one year and the loss of 30 scholarships to be reduced to 15.

Haden, along with university president Max Nikias and vice president for athletic compliance David Roberts, will be in attendance at the January hearing in Indianapolis in addition to the school’s legal counsel.

“I am not terribly optimistic that we are going to win the appeal,” Haden said in a statement published on USCTrojans.com’s RipsIt Blog. “If you look at it statistically, about 10 percent of appeals win. Having said that, we feel like we have some very good points to make. We are going to put our best foot forward and hope for the best, but we probably will not know for quite some time after that.”