Upon Further Review

I was able to find out more about the charges against Syracuse and Jim Boeheim that lead to some serious penalties.
And I haven't changed my mind one bit.
There are three majors things here:
1) A rogue employee of the YMCA had tremendous access to the players and there is good reason to believe he paid them, but at the very least they got credit for internships they didn't fulfill, and the University didn't take enough steps to make sure they did
2) Players had work done for them. One example says a player wrote a paper which fell short of the class requirements, but eventually handed in one that met those requirements, and that paper was found on the computer of a tutor
3) Players failed drug tests and nothing was done about it

That is a gross over-simplificiation but I figure if you cared enough you have already read this comprehensive summary and if you don't care enough, my above bullets are enough to get you to understand.

Based on those findings I understand why the NCAA had to deem players ineligible and dock the scholarships, but what is standing out to some people is the unprecedented 9-game suspension of head coach Jim Boeheim.

"...in his interview the head basketball coach acknowledged that he had student-athletes test positive and rather than call the student-athletes' parents, he brought the student-athletes in and talked to them. When questioned why he did not call the parents, the head basketball coach responded that the director of athletics did not require him to follow the policy and, in at least in some instances, "it would have been fruitless." At the hearing, the head basketball coach also admitted that he did not call the parents because his director of athletics told him he did not have to and he did not know that failing to follow the policy violated NCAA rules."

Here is what I gather and it seems totally plausible to me: Coach Boeheim didn't like the rules, he didn't follow the rules, he didn't think he needed to follow the rules and when questioned about it he said he didn't even know what he did violated the rules.

And he probably was rude and dismissive to the investigators.

If you're the NCAA, and you're going to bother playing whack-a-mole with this kind of stuff, you have to come down hard on Syracuse and Coach Boeheim. If you don't you look even more feckless than most people thought you were.

In summary, Syracuse committed a long list of violations over an extended period of time. They tried to blame it on outside individuals and dismissed former employees, but the University, the athletic department and especially Coach Boeheim showed little or no inclination to follow the rules, so how else to make them (and all the other schools doing the same thing) take the rules more seriously in the future, but him them with severe penalities?