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Sac State Football Coach Resigns over Possible NCAA Violations

Last week, Sacramento State head football coach Marshall Sperbeck resigned with little warning from that position. According to Jay Davidson and Bill Paterson of the Sacramento Bee, the reason is thought to do with potential NCAA violations:

Sac State athletic director Terry Wanless said Sperbeck “resigned for personal reasons” with two years left on his contract. Wanless wouldn’t confirm that the coach stepped down as a result of an internal investigation that started with an anonymous 10-page letter that was sent to The Bee, Sac State and the NCAA. The letter outlined in detail how Sperbeck allegedly violated NCAA rules by exceeding the phone call limit to recruits and stopping by a workout during an NCAA coaching “dead period.”

Those two violations are not serious enough to warrant an immediate resignation unless Sperbeck had violated both rules many times. Then again it also does not take 10-pages to outline relatively minor NCAA violations unless there were very many and the detail was as exhaustive as an NCAA public report.

The article does not mention when the letter arrived at the newspaper, NCAA, or Sac State. If an investigation had been going on a while, it is possible that it was prompted by the violations alleged in the letter but revealed something more serious. If the university decided that Sperbeck would be facing some of the most serious penalties for a coach in the NCAA’s new enforcement structure, resigning might have become more attractive.


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