Missouri Reports Secondary NCAA Violations
The University of Missouri released records on their secondary violations over the last year. Highlights included:
- Football coach who had impermissible contact with a recruiting during the 2011 spring evaluation period. The program lost four evaluation days in Spring 2012.
- A basketball coach evaluated prospects in July 2012 at an event not certified by the NCAA. The program also ran an elite camp with different sleeping and eating arrangements. That resulted in a loss of four recruiting-person days and the loss of an elite camp this summer.
- Missouri softball had two tampering violations with transfers, one of which resulted in a month long off-campus ban for some coaches.
Two things jump out. First, it is surprising that Missouri head basketball coach Frank Haith was not suspended for the camp violation. This is from the Board of Directors Basketball Focus Group plan:
Endorse and strongly encourage the use of suspensions of a head men’s basketball and/or assistant men’s basketball coach by the enforcement staff, in the case of secondary infractions, or the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions, in the case of secondary or major infractions, from coaching in NCAA tournament games or regular season games for violations of the following:
The operation of men’s basketball camps in violation of NCAA legislation. [Tier I-2-c and/or Tier III-3]
Haith’s program violated one of the specific recommendations of the Board of Directors and those recommendations include a “strongly encouraged” penalty of suspension for the head coach. Tom Izzo must be fuming.
The other notable bit was the repeated violation of the NCAA’s rules on contacting transfers by the softball program. Both appear to be in the last few months, which means the second violation should be a Level I secondary violation, the reason it went to the NCAA rather than the SEC. That should carry with it a stiffer penalty, if not a more thorough investigation by the NCAA.