NCAA finds Michigan football in violation of 5 major infractions....

salsadancer7

SatelliteGuys Master
Original poster
Jun 1, 2004
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South Florida
Uh oh.....trouble abrewin' in Ann Arbor...:(

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- The NCAA is accusing Michigan Wolverines of five potentially major rules violations under coach Rich Rodriguez, who admitted making "mistakes" but will be back for a third try at putting the Wolverines back into the national title hunt.

Incoming athletic director David Brandon disclosed the NCAA conclusions Tuesday, while expressing full support for his coach, who is just 8-16 in two seasons heading the nation's winningest football program.

"Rich Rodriguez is our football coach, and he will be our football coach next year," Brandon said.

In its notice of allegations -- which Michigan received Monday -- the NCAA said Rodriguez "failed to promote an atmosphere of compliance within the football program." He tracked neither what his staff was doing nor whether his players were following NCAA rules, particularly those limiting the time spent on practice and football-related activities, the report said.

It also said the athletics department failed to make sure its football program was complying with NCAA regulations. Brandon said the department "clearly made mistakes," but "there was no charge of loss of institutional control" -- an allegation that in previous cases has led to severe NCAA sanctions for other schools.

An accompanying letter from the NCAA to university President Mary Sue Coleman said Michigan "should understand that all of the alleged violations set forth in the document" are considered to be "potential major violations of NCAA legislation, unless designated as secondary."

Brandon said he wasn't sure he understood "the difference between 'major' and 'minor' and 'secondary' and 'primary.'"

"They spell it out very specifically in their own language," he said.

Another possible problem for Michigan is that it could be subject to the NCAA's "repeat violator rule" because it was sanctioned in 2003 for wrongdoing within the basketball program.

"We will make all necessary changes," Coleman said. "What we will not do is make excuses."

Michigan has 90 days to respond and will appear at an NCAA hearing on infractions in August. The school will see how its internal investigation matches up with the NCAA findings and will consider implementing self-imposed sanctions, a move that could reduce NCAA penalties.

The NCAA said last October that it was looking into the Wolverine program following a report in the Detroit Free Press citing anonymous football players that said Michigan exceeded NCAA limits regarding practices and workouts in 2008 and 2009..

On Tuesday, the coach said if the football staff misinterpreted NCAA rules, "That's on us."

"We're looking at it to see why we misinterpreted and why we made mistakes," he said.

NCAA regulations allow players to spend eight hours a week on mandatory workouts during the offseason. Players told the Free Press they spent two to three times that amount on required workouts, though the NCAA report released Tuesday said players more often exceeded the limit by two hours per week.

The players also said the amount of time they spent on football activities during the season exceeded the weekly limit of 20 hours and often exceeded the daily limit of four hours. They said football staff often watched offseason scrimmages that are supposed to be voluntary.

Near the end of last season, the school released embarrassing details of an internal audit that discovered Rodriguez's team failed to file forms tracking how much time players spent on football during his first season and the following offseason.

The audit noted "a concern" that the football program failed to file monthly forms created by the school to comply with NCAA rules by tracking how much players work out and practice.

The school report did not find issues of noncompliance -- a key issue for NCAA investigators -- but acknowledged the practice logs for football were not available to be reviewed when the audit was conducted. The forms since had been turned in on a timely basis, according to the school.

"My reading of the situation is we had a breakdown of communication," Brandon said Tuesday. "We found we were not being vigilant in the way those [time records] were being filled and managed."

The time record system that the football staff designed "was too cumbersome to manage" and is being changed.

The decision to hold the infractions hearing in August means Michigan will have a distraction just as

the Wolverines are getting set to kick off a new season in their refurbished stadium.

[ame="http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4938956"]NCAA finds Michigan was not in compliance with practice time rules under coach Rich Rodriguez - ESPN[/ame]
 
The NCAA will apply the same two questions it always applies in these cases.

1 - Is the school a "traditional power"?
2 - Is the school not "southern"?

The matrix is that two nos = major violation, one no and one yes = minor penalty and two nos = nothing done. Michigan will thus be strongly cautioned to not cheat anymore. Just like OSU, USC, etc.
 
Hopefully players who leave other "major" schools with an axe to grind will talk to the press. I am not justifying them breaking the "rules" but you can't tell me that other schools don't practice too much. If the NCAA is going to crackdown on one school I would like to see them go after all schools and actually enforce the rules on the books fairly across the board
 
Hopefully players who leave other "major" schools with an axe to grind will talk to the press. I am not justifying them breaking the "rules" but you can't tell me that other schools don't practice too much. If the NCAA is going to crackdown on one school I would like to see them go after all schools and actually enforce the rules on the books fairly across the board

good point...the I bet the difference is at other place, the players didn't talk.
 
Everyone here knows I'm MICHIGAN man, so my comments will appear biased. So let me put this into proper perspective. If this was "that evil school from the South", I would call these violations piddly and irrelevant. I'm just happy that this didn't involve paying players, grade fixing, or recruiting violations. As for penalties, I look for a loss of maybe 2-3 scholarships, and some limitations on practice time. (Like all this extra practice helped anyhow.) Some of the violations are ridiculous. One stated that they practiced 20 minutes too long on one day. The most serious seem to involve making players run extra drills because they skipped class, running over their time allotments. They weren't missing school because of practice. They were practicing because they didn't attend their classes.

As for Rodriguez, this boy is skating on thin ice, but only because he isn't winning. Another losing season, will end his career here. The violations will just be part of the pretext. Losing will be the reason he's canned.
 
It sure is funny how the omission of 1 word in the title makes this sound so much worse than it really is. Of course that word is "potentially". Just about every news source dropped it to make the story sound that much better!

As for the wrong-doings.. 20 minutes extra practice? Come on! Making a kid run laps for skipping summer classes? Sounds like a just punishment to me, and perfectly legal in-season, but not out. Another was that they had QC personnel attend coaches meetings. NCAA said this was not allowed, but has since changed its rules and it is allowed.

I dont think Michigan deserves a loss of scholarships or other penalties in this, unless its minor like loss of practice time or something. Maybe the NCAA would like to look at schools with real issues, maybe USC or OSU or Tennessee? NCAA is a joke, cant wait to see how they handle their media-darling USC.
 
It sure is funny how the omission of 1 word in the title makes this sound so much worse than it really is. Of course that word is "potentially". Just about every news source dropped it to make the story sound that much better!

As for the wrong-doings.. 20 minutes extra practice? Come on! Making a kid run laps for skipping summer classes? Sounds like a just punishment to me, and perfectly legal in-season, but not out. Another was that they had QC personnel attend coaches meetings. NCAA said this was not allowed, but has since changed its rules and it is allowed.

I dont think Michigan deserves a loss of scholarships or other penalties in this, unless its minor like loss of practice time or something. Maybe the NCAA would like to look at schools with real issues, maybe USC or OSU or Tennessee? NCAA is a joke, cant wait to see how they handle their media-darling USC.

The omission of that word is not on purpose. According to the story, they found them guilty of these violations. I TOO believe they are minor. And I TOO believe that there are other school that have more serious problems.
 
Oh I wasnt complaining about how you wrote it, but the fact is that the NCAA's own statement had the word "possible" in front of the word "major". The exact quote from the NCAA was:

"Your institution should understand that all of the alleged violations set forth in the document attached to this letter are considered to be potential major violations of NCAA legislation, unless designated as secondary."

But the news media, particularly the Detroit Free Press (the same ones that leaked the info, twisted the words of players to create the whole story to begin with, had 1 anonymous ex-player source (oh the list goes on) came out and said that the NCAA found Michigan guilt of 5 major infractions. When I read the above statement, I do not get that understanding from it at all. Yes there is the possibility of it, but the NCAA's own verbage suggests that this is still an ongoing investigation and no final determination has been set. Afterall, thats what the meeting in August is all about, final determination.

But I agree with you whole-heartedly, the NCAA is a sham, and going after the supposed violations that Michigan committed (whether it was Michigan or any other school) is a waste of time IMO. There are so many other programs that have grade scandals, fake-work programs, potential prostitution used to lure recruits, and so on, that going after 2 hours of extra workouts per week or a QC person sitting in on a coaching meeting is just a waste of time and makes them out to be the idiots that they are.
 
Oh I wasnt complaining about how you wrote it, but the fact is that the NCAA's own statement had the word "possible" in front of the word "major". The exact quote from the NCAA was:

"Your institution should understand that all of the alleged violations set forth in the document attached to this letter are considered to be potential major violations of NCAA legislation, unless designated as secondary."

But the news media, particularly the Detroit Free Press (the same ones that leaked the info, twisted the words of players to create the whole story to begin with, had 1 anonymous ex-player source (oh the list goes on) came out and said that the NCAA found Michigan guilt of 5 major infractions. When I read the above statement, I do not get that understanding from it at all. Yes there is the possibility of it, but the NCAA's own verbage suggests that this is still an ongoing investigation and no final determination has been set. Afterall, thats what the meeting in August is all about, final determination.

But I agree with you whole-heartedly, the NCAA is a sham, and going after the supposed violations that Michigan committed (whether it was Michigan or any other school) is a waste of time IMO. There are so many other programs that have grade scandals, fake-work programs, potential prostitution used to lure recruits, and so on, that going after 2 hours of extra workouts per week or a QC person sitting in on a coaching meeting is just a waste of time and makes them out to be the idiots that they are.

And yet, if a kid just wants to get a job to have a little cash in his pocket....he is not allowed to because it's an NCAA violation. :confused::rolleyes:

A local sports radio talk show host, who played in the NFL and was recruited big time when he was in high school said it best...."universities WILL take advantage of the football and basketball player for THEIR betterment....WHY is the NCAA surprised when a student athlete does....?"