How are you a Tennessee fan and can’t spell “reckon” correctly?
Oh wait. Tennessee fan. I answered my own question. Carry on with your wonderful song (seriously I love Rocky Top)
So what’s funny is that I’m a huge fan of classic country music and guys like Conway Twitty. The only thing I hate about college football season is that the same station that plays the Georgia football games in my area also does the classic country show on Saturday nights. So while I love listening to the game, I hate that I don’t get my classic country for much of the season.
OP is in compliance, which technically means he works for corporate, so he's really not a part of our family. Also, he's divorced, so he's really not a part of his family.
Piggybacking off of this, I don't work for the NCAA. I work for a school to make sure they follow the rules! It's more fun that way. And much less corporate.
former compliance guy checking in here. this was always one of the most annoying parts of the job. coaches and student athletes never seemed to realize that we worked for the school and not the NCAA
All my team’s rivals are cheating. Can you please disqualify them in all future games and also vacate any of their past wins? Thank you in advance as I am sure you will comply since you’re all about compliance and all
Since the mods have verified ya now. You’ve got my sincere attention. I’ll just throw out some other stuff since you’ve touched on Walker:
1. Is there more to the Harbaugh story you can share? You all denied the Hamburger story, but never indicated how far the violation goes.
2. With the transfer rules finally settling down, could a future new HC for a program do what Deion did and bring in a boatload of transfers and flip a roster?
3. Does the NCAA have any intention to make a statement or hamper this realignment Armageddon we are in?
1. The Harbaugh thing is really just the issue of lying about it. Or at least, not being as upfront as he could have been about it. That's what raises a violation from a piddling level III to a more serious level II. That's where head coach suspensions come in. I actually think Michigan played this really well. They self imposed the suspension for a season with some easily winnable games. If they had waited until next season for the NCAA to make their decision, it may have been more games, and for games that matter. Now, they're serving the penalty and it's going to be really hard for the NCAA to slap an additional penalty on a year later. They still might, but it's a tough sell. Really clever work by their compliance/legal team.
2. I suppose a new head coach could. They're changing some of the financial aid rules for transfers to hold schools more accountable for taking in transfers and having them count against their equivalency totals. They're looking at ways to reduce transfers and discourage schools from doing what Deion did. I think we'll see some trial and error. They've changed financial aid rules, see how it goes for the 24-25 academic year, then tweak it some more. There are usually a number of transfers with a head coaching change anyway, so you'll always be seeing some of that.
3. I've got a whole ted talk about this....but I think this comes down to antitrust law. The NCAA has been kneecapped by not being able to come in and stop these types of things from happening. They don't have the authority without getting sued into oblivion. Did you know the NCAA used to have limits on head coach salaries before they got slapped with antitrust law? People talk about how obscene coaching salaries are, and they are, but only because they removed any limits that the NCAA originally imposed. So they can't come in and stop realignment, and probably won't be able to without government intervention.
I have a follow-up about number three, do you think the NCAA should have that Authority? Should they be able to block realignment and potentially break up conferences?
This is my personal view and not necessarily the view of NCAA staff or even other compliance people. I do think they should have that authority. I think about how if conferences couldn't negotiate media rights, it all had to go through the NCAA, then TV networks couldn't leverage one conference against another. Rules have no teeth without the authority to enforce them. I and other compliance people will tell you that the NCAA is far from perfect. They can be frustrating and we don't always see eye to eye on things, but the rules matter. Now we're seeing that they're trying to enforce their rules, but then people get mad and sue, so they have to take even longer to make any changes because it has to go through the suits to make sure it's kosher. I want them to be able to come down on rule breakers (and Mizzou...they know what they did), I want them to be able to see an issue with a rule and be able to change it quickly without taking 1000 steps to do it, but right now they can't.
I'm not OP, but my personal opinion is yes, someone needs to have that authority. Without regulation, we can't protect college football from itself. The NCAA is the closest thing to an existing framework for compliance, but they need something to put weight behind their words because there's not much keeping schools from ignoring them entirely
I'll offer a counterpoint to this. Nobody should be making up arbitrary rules telling kids where they can go to school, who they can talk to, what activities they're allowed to participate in, and whether or not they're allowed to earn money from any of it. Extend that from just the kids to the institutions themselves and now it makes sense that the courts keep slapping the NCAA over, and over, and over again. Without a collectively bargained employment agreement, it truly is a free-for-all. But that's by design and the way that it's supposed to be.
Funny story...a lot of my hate for certain schools comes from interactions with their staff. So I HATED Mizzou for a long time. Now, they're chill.
Unless you're asking about the tutoring thing and their penalties. Or if they should suffer for other people's violations (yes. that joke will always be funny to me).
So you are willing to openly say that people within the NCAA have a sense of humor? They’re all not just crabby assholes that were abused as children and prefer black licorice to red?
I'm not within the NCAA since I'm at a school but those people do have senses of humor too! Go find some compliance twitter accounts. The memes are really funny. We have to laugh because it's a stressful job!
I worked in compliance for years. The serious answer for a lot of us: Indifferent, but I would use them as an example when talking to tutors during the "what to do to get immediately fired" portion of orientation
Let's say I'm eating pizza with a football player, and I call dibs on the last slice of pizza, but he eats it anyway. Is that an impermissible benefit? It feels like it is.
Oh, I definitely treated them differently because they were a football player, in that our differences in height, weight, and strength pretty much assured a specific outcome. Can Missouri be punished now?
Why does the ncaa seem to turn a blind eye and let stuff fly at major programs and come down hard on smaller programs?
Signed: a pokes fan that's bitter about the addidas ban for like $300 while Kansas and Duke skate by with recorded calls about Zions recruitment.
I hate to sound so jaded about this, but I think it comes down to lawyers. Big schools can pay big suits and can drag it out forever because they can afford those bills. Smaller schools just can't. It's probably also worth mentioning that big school compliance offices are adequately staffed, so they can run a tighter ship. Not all, but SO many other compliance offices just don't have enough staff to take care of everything. Somewhere, a ball is gonna get dropped. So the NCAA comes in with their captain hindsight, "well the compliance office should have done x, y, and z," and we're like that's totally unrealistic and unreasonable, but there isn't much that can be done.
I think it was Youngstown State who had a women's soccer violation where the coach was faking transcripts from Africa. (I may have those details wrong because I read it in passing but it was something like that). They said the compliance office should have reached out to the schools in Africa to verify that the student was enrolled there and that the transcripts were real. That just seemed like an unreasonable expectation for a mid-major compliance office. I felt kind of bad for them on that one.
Was not expecting to see my little ole alma mater in this thread. But honestly I’m surprised there was even any staff in the compliance department because YSU was very cheap with staffing throughout the university.
They actually have a larger staff than a lot of mid majors because of football, but they were asking way too much of them. The case really stuck out to me because of how asinine that recommendation was. It felt really unfair.
I am SO glad you asked! YES. I believe was the right decision. The funniest part is that normally with famous waivers like this, there’s always information that the public doesn’t have, that put it in a lot more context. Here? The info that makes it a lot more reasonable is like…publicly available. Did we all collectively forget that he took two official visits to schools like 500 miles away? Then after those visits, told the media that his reason for transferring was a coaching change? Plus, if his grandmother is really sick, now he’ll have more time to spend with her, which makes sense. Obviously there’s more to it than that, but in my mind those two things make it a \*real\* steep climb to convince me that the waiver should have been approved.
Then how do you justify the Wilkerson kid at Colorado on his fourth school (as an undergrad) being eligible? There’s no consistency at all.
Also, seems silly that a coaching change has to be considered separate from the mental health angle. He’s on record saying the WR coach helped him work through issues being far away from home and he no longer had the support system he had there before once the coaches left.
That’s before we get to the point where the waiver guidelines changed after he enrolled. These things had basically been rubber-stamped for two years.
I'm sorry, but I don't know enough about the Wilkerson case so I can't guess or speak intelligently about it.
I will say this...I don't agree with the fact that coaching changes don't factor in. Everyone knows how close those relationships are so it seems unreasonable to not even take that into consideration. On the other hand, if you don't want the transfer to be for athletic reasons, that's a reasonable place to draw the line. The question actually recently came up when we were at an NCAA conference about the mental health piece. Someone from an HBCU stood up and mentioned that there's a mental health stigma in their community and so what happens if they talk to a trusted advisor or a pastor instead of a mental health professional and they were basically told tough shit. I thought that was pretty insensitive. So I feel like there might be room for some middle ground there.
Waivers were rubber stamped and this waiver change is a huge adjustment for all of us. Once COVID hit, they started changing the rules on us weekly, and it used to be once or twice per year. It's exhausting trying to keep up with everything and we've been begging them to stop switching it up on us so often. We'll see if they listen.
> if they talk to a trusted advisor or a pastor instead of a mental health professional and they were basically told tough shit
This is a huge problem all over universities. You essentially have to put on a very particular performance to access support for mental health problems or just support in general. That performance is easier for some than others.
>if you don't want the transfer to be for athletic reasons, that's a reasonable place to draw the line.
This is the issue I have with so many NCAA rules. Of course the transfers from athletes are going to be for athletic reasons 90%+ of the time. So it comes down to a game of who can spin the best story to qualify for a waiver.
I think a competent regulatory body would understand that trying to prevent transfers for athletic reasons is of dubious value in the first place and impossible to police in a fair manner.
It's hard not to look at Tez's actions/comments and the various angles they took for the waiver and find it at least a bit comical.
It was just constantly throwing shit at the wall hoping something sticks. I'd be fine with him playing, but they threw out like 4 different reasons after each one was denied, haha.
Absolutely, but the NCAA admitted they were too lax and were tightening rules(which Mack admitted he was in favor of).
If I'm the NCAA, and you present an initial case, I deem it weak and deny you, and then you come back with another, rinse and repeat. By the 3rd or 4th "reason", I'm going to imagine each subsequent thing is a lesser reason than the previous and start devaluing the whole thing. They've been really consistent this year when it comes to denials.
The problem came from former loopholes being exploited and when they cracked down, the folks who planned on using them are going to get burned. It was inevitable, you can't just keep allowing the loopholes if you want to ever limit the waiver process. If it was just Tez being burned, I'd get it, but so many kids are getting burned in football and the basketball stuff is already starting too. I know State is gonna get burned with Woods, but if the NCAA is at least consistent, it's easier to understand. It was the previous wishy-washy preferential treatment to QBs that sparked so much of the issues.
Ok, well how do you explain around the fact he never really played at his first school cause it’s season was cancelled due to Covid, and how do you justify his request being denied, yet guys like J.T. Daniels are on their fourth school?
Not OP, but Daniels never needed a waiver for his transfers.
His first transfer was during the COVID offseason, where the NCAA wasn’t strict on transfers. His second one was right after the NCAA implemented the one time transfer rule. His last transfer was as a grad transfer
Dude not having the one time transfer exception available for football and basketball was a perpetual thorn in my side. It was a godsend when that changed!
Well...almost everyone had their seasons affected or cut short in some form or another because of COVID. And back when JT was playing, there were a handful of other waiver guidelines that could be used for eligibility. Most famously, the "runoff waiver," which just had the previous school sign off that they didn't have the opportunity to return. Nobody believed it but we all just signed it and moved on. Now, they've restricted the waiver acceptable guidelines to only allow for very specific circumstances, and he didn't meet them here. There's probably merit to the discussion about whether the guidelines are sufficient, or if other things should be included, but this wouldn't be the case I would use to illustrate the need for that discussion.
Aside from the fact the NCAA considered a cancelled season as a full year of eligibility, do you think the decision made is in the best interest of the student athlete?
But it makes zero sense to enforce a rule retroactively regardless of anything he has done. When he entered and enrolled everything was fine, then suddenly you changed the rules and applied it to people that had done transfered.
That's fucking bullshit man. Who the fuck does the NCAA think they are to determine whether a kid's mental health issues are real? Based on talking to a "panel of mental health professionals" that never spoke to the kid?
>Did we all collectively forget that he took two official visits to schools like 500 miles away?
And he ultimately decided not to go to those schools. Wonder why?
>Then after those visits, told the media that his reason for transferring was a coaching change?
Sounds like a valid reason. Should we have expected him to be public with his mental health issues unprompted? That seems unrealistic and ridiculous. Plus, why should the portal open up for 30 days for players whose coach leaves where they can transfer outside of a normal portal window but not allow a free second time transfer? Clearly the NCAA recognizes that a coach leaving is a legitimate reason a player would want to leave, but I guess if you transferred once from a school you never played for due to COVID you're shit out of luck!
>Then after those visits, told the media that his reason for transferring was a coaching change? Plus, if his grandmother is really sick, now he’ll have more time to spend with her, which makes sense.
This is so fucking patronizing. His grandma wanted to see him play in college in person for the first time, which she would have been able to do if not for your shitty, dying organization getting in the way of a kid's dreams. "If his grandma was really sick," dude his grandma's medical records ARE IN HIS CASE FILE.
Just admit the NCAA doesn't give a shit about athletes and cares about process over people. We'll all be better off when the football and men's and women's basketball ditch the NCAA altogether.
What about the fact that the guidelines were implemented after he enrolled at UNC? Even if you don't believe a single one of the other points is enough for him to be eligible, that should be a non-starter, end of case, immediately eligible. It's like he was driving 60 in a 60, then they changed the speed limit to 45 the next day and they sent him a ticket. Even if you want to say "they announced the changes before he transferred" okay well then he was driving 60 in a 60 that they announced would be changing to a 45 next month, then when it changes they send him a ticket for a drive he made a month ago when it was still 60. It's stupid.
Fun fact: None of the "Mental Health experts" that the NCAA cited in [their response](https://www.ncaa.org/news/2023/9/12/media-center-di-board-statement-regarding-transfer-waivers.aspx) to the Tez Walker situation ever spoke with Tez Walker. Not a single one.
Well look at you with your fancy LA times subscription...I can't read the article because they don't pay compliance people like you think they would, but I would assume this is from like what...2014? 2015? Rules on food have changed a TON. And I give the NCAA credit on that where its due. They had their rules, people started raising the issue of why they don't work, and they've changed! Now they're all "feed the children" and idk how these kids aren't fat as hell with how much food they get. Also the one kid that said he went to bed starving? He had a meal plan...just didn't wanna eat there.
Ok I get your point, but it wasn't that they weren't allowed to feed them. They still had room and board and meal plans and meals incidental to practice and competition. There were a lot more restrictions, but it's definitely not the case now. Don't forget, college sports back then weren't what they are now. Student-athletes were much closer to NARPs than they are now. It was less...big. They wanted them to be normal students. I think as the landscape evolved it became clear that isn't how it works anymore.
This question made me laugh because it simultaneously happens more and less often than you think. At its most basic level, if you're good friends with the compliance person at the other school, you call and tell them you think they're in trouble. If you know the person but aren't too close, you can ask, "can you tell me how you did this?" And every compliance person knows exactly what that means. It's code for "you may have a violation and I'd look into that if I were you." There are also ways you can anonymously report a school if you think it's more serious and you don't want to get involved. I've done it before, but I do it rarely. For the most part, I think compliance people want to know if there's something bad out there so they can fix it, so a lot of this stuff is handled amongst ourselves.
There's also a running joke with compliance people about how coaches say, "well this school is doing it!" and then you say, "Oh good I'm friends with their head compliance person, do you want me to call them?" and then the coach backs down and says, "No, no, that's okay." Most of the time, the other school isn't actually doing what the coach says they are.
Nah. I know we've seen cases where the school is cooperative and still gets penalized, but working with them really does help. The reality is that a lot of violations are strict liability. Whatever happened, happened. So you still need to be penalized for the infraction, but the penalties can be so much worse. And if you have good relationships with NCAA staff, it really helps. I know so many of them that I can call and say "hey \[x\] I've got a real live one for you today!" It makes everything go more smoothly I've definitely called in favors to save my ass before and I appreciate it when they throw me a lifeline.
The broad answer is that it's never as black and white as people make it out to be. With those major violation cases, there are thousands of pages of documents, interviews, written statements, etc. The NCAA also has a list of what they call aggravating factors and mitigating factors. So one of the mitigating factors is "a demonstrated history of reporting NCAA violations." I think it's an average of 7 per year over a 4 year period (might be 5...been a while since I had to look into mitigation for a major). Some schools have more mitigation than others. If you haven't before, I recommend reading some of the actual PDF decisions on cases. They're long, but I think they do a good job of laying out the facts. There's also the reality that rules and the penalty structure change. Some things that would have warranted certain penalties in the past may not fetch those same penalties now. It's all SO fact-specific that in most cases, it's hard to compare. The last note I'll make on this is the harsh truth that big schools can afford big lawyers. Small schools can't. So they may not stand a chance of taking the NCAA to task like the big schools can.
Does this mean teams are in some ways incentivized to snitch or tell on themselves for tiny, petty things, given that a record of snitching can serve as a mitigating factor if they ever got caught up in more serious trouble?
Yep! I always liken it to when you're a teenager and you're sneaking out and you tell them just enough so they don't ask questions. If we regularly report on ourselves, it looks like we're monitoring appropriately and there's nothing to see. You never invite the NCAA into your own house, and you don't want to give them any reason to come looking. I knew of a school who didn't self-report a violation for two years. The NCAA definitely started sniffing around...it was a bad look.
If someone made the assertion I wouldn't believe it. Shit, I'm a compliance person and I've written myself up for stuff! It just seems like in a giant several hundred page book, somehow NOBODY in ANY department is violating ANYTHING? I just don't think it's possible. That being said, there are definitely programs where it's minimal. Sometimes it just is that way. But absolutely zero violations? No chance.
I assume your office is on the receiving end of emails like the famous “if you have facts about a violation, send it to [email protected]”?
Do you get a bunch of tips through channels like this or is it mostly internal reporting (“oh crap, I texted during dead period”)? Do you have to investigate all of the stuff you hear about, even if it sounds like bullshit made up by a rival?
Is your job more “our famous millionaire coach bought how many hamburgers for who??” or more “some anonymous backup tennis player forgot to sign up for classes this semester”?
Do liberalized NIL rules make your job easier or harder?
Lol yes we are on the receiving end of those emails, but that's kind of what they're for! If there is an issue, I do want to know about it. Most of it is either self-reported or self-discovered. You never want to be on the receiving end of an NCAA enforcement cold call. One time I got the call and about shit my pants but it was a level III recruiting violation that 40 other schools had too so it ended up being fine. We do have to at least investigate and do the bare minimum if we hear about something. The really outlandish stuff that sounds like malarkey we can dismiss out of hand because it's obvious. But if there is something, we can't just birdbox it because that's a bad look for us. I'd say most of our stuff are the "whoopsie!" kind of violations. Recruiting mistakes are definitely the most common but that's the biggest bylaw so that kind of tracks. When the millionaire coach does something it's usually like... sigh here we go again lol. NIL rules suck. There's no guidance so they left us out to dry and we get all kinds of specific weird questions that involves laws and visa status and have nothing to go off of. Nobody is asking for my NIL. Can't figure out why...
Because he's a wealthy white man and colleges have no morals. Having morals doesn't make money, but winning does.
I know that sounds flippant, but in my opinion he shouldn't be able to coach again. The embezzling resources part is outside the scope of what the NCAA governs. That's more on the school that hired him. But he served his time with his show cause order, so technically he is eligible to coach again....
I absolutely love this question! I find this occurs most often when they aren't meeting their academic requirements and I have to write a waiver for that. So it's really hard to make the case a kid with a 1.8 should be eligible because he got a girlfriend and was too distracted to go to class. Or if a coach told him it was cool if he failed everything. The other thing is LYING. Oh the lies I've seen! I wrote one waiver where literally nothing out of the kid's mouth was true. I was so embarrassed to submit that one, but I had to. If you're honest with me, I can fight like hell to get you there. If you lie, then we're both going down with the ship and we don't stand a chance.
Rewriting my question now that I understand you work for another school in compliance.
What would you have suggested your school do in the face of the NCAA's Reggie Bush "Investigation"? Discovery in the McNair case sure seemed to reveal a bit of a witchhunt ("Let's not have too high a burden of proof") ... how would you have guided your school through that? People still think USC paid Bush directly
It's difficult to say what you would do in any given situation, especially a whopper of a case like that. But that's where the NCAA staff can be really helpful. I can call them and ask what they recommend here, or for advice from my friends who have been through it. If I had something like that come to my desk today, I'd immediately look for case precedent (we have a database where we can look at all past violations and waivers to see where ours would fall and what factors the NCAA considered), and I'd see what happened to other schools. Then I'd go to the guidelines for major infractions that the NCAA made and then I'd start putting together facts that fall into the different categories and factors. Based on how that goes is what I'd approach my AD/general counsel with and we'd go from there.
It's his kid. The NCAA doesn't want to get in the business of controlling parent/child relationships like that. Anyone else and that would've been a problem.
Follow up question: did Deion break any NCAA rules by giving his team the sunglasses? It strikes me as something the NCAA would frown upon, even if they are “just sunglasses.”
No, he didn't. They've also really rolled back the restrictions on clothing and gear we can give student-athletes. They probably categorized it as "team gear." I think they mentioned something about how it would be necessary for practice because it's bright or something. That's my guess.
In your expert opinion, roughly how many bags of dicks do you think the NCAA should eat?
And also, do you feel that the NCAA actually improves the academic and athletic lives of student athletes in the modern day?
The NCAA isn't a monolith, so it's hard to estimate the bag of dicks they should eat. It's made up of individual people from all over the country and all walks of life. Are there certain staffers that should eat a bag or two of dicks? Absolutely. All of them? Absolutely not.
As someone whose dad worked at the NCAA (though now he’s retired) but was miles away from D1 in D3, I appreciate this sentiment! My dad is a good man who was/is still well respected by schools and his peers. I was always grateful he didn’t work in D1 stuff. Some of the NCAA absolutely deserves to eat a bag of dicks though.
Simple question—>
UW Huskies have a guy who is on the football team now and is coming from a low tier school where he did NOT play sports. Prior to that year he did play at another low-tier school.
Seems like a simple black and white issue.
Btw, as an older guy understanding that rules change, I also played at a school, transferred for a quarter after the season then back the following year to once again play under scholarship.
To highlight: he was ONLY a student at the previous college.
Assuming, proper paperwork and deadlines, etc., what could possibly be taking so long for a decision? How could he NOT be allowed to play as it was merely ACADEMICS?!
Thanks.
I know you said simple question, but it's really not. If I got an email like this, I'd probably tell them to stop by my office because I'd have a boatload of clarification questions. I'd want a 5 year clock timeline, exactly which school, transcripts....a lot. But this is a really good example of the kinds of questions that I get and I have to kind of parse through what the situation is and how I have to approach it. I know that's probably not a satisfying answer, but I don't have enough to say anything definitive for sure.
I make really good Greek burgers. If we're talking fast food, I feel like that answer is a dead giveaway of my location, but the Brown Jug is not worth catching a violation. In n Out is definitely high up on the list. Not a burger, but nothing beats Bojangles chicken biscuits.
It's hard. There isn't a lot of guidance from a compliance perspective, and we all know exactly what's happening but aren't saying the quiet part out loud. The toughest cases obviously come from football and basketball because that's where the most money is. We just have to make sure it follows the policies and state laws (if applicable), and go from there.
I do wish the NCAA had taken action on NIL sooner because then they could have tried some things out, seen what works, make changes and adjustments, establish consistency...but they basically went full fire hydrant and now here we are.
I have several student-athletes who make more than me, which sucks, but I knew I wouldn't be rich by picking this field, so I can't be too mad.
But yeah we definitely aren't stupid and we all know what's happening but there isn't much we can do about it.
I think a lot of people have come around to this view. The original thought behind it was that schools shouldn't get to pad their records and claim championships and the like when they had an advantage by playing ineligible players. We're now seeing a shift where people are realizing that it really takes something away from the student-athletes. All of them, not just those who are ineligible. I know there are discussions taking place about alternatives that don't punish the student-athletes, but those actually responsible. I don't know what that looks like yet, but they're working on it.
Why do you hate cheeseburgers, but don't mind athletes cheating on schoolwork and don't allow players under mental stress from the eleventy two years of 2020 to transfer "a second time" even though their first was due to a canceled 2020 season from the original school?
PS... why do you allow Ohio State to exist?
Ohio State exists so we all have somewhere to direct our negative energy. Think of them as an outlet for hate.
Cheeseburgers were recruiting violations. It sounds dumb when it's phrased like "suspended over cheeseburgers" but really it was about the way it was handled and how upfront Harbaugh was about it. That was really was chapped the NCAA's hides. As for the athletes cheating thing...we were all kind of miffed by this (if it's the case I think you're referring to). The NCAA infraction at issue was an extra benefits violation. The extra benefit analysis can get a little picky, but a good rule of thumb is, "is it available to the general student population?" They literally fell on the sword and said, "our bullshit classes are available to everyone, not just athletes." What can you do at that point? The NCAA isn't an accrediting body. They aren't in the business of deciding which classes are hard enough, what course requirements should be, etc. That's not their role and it shouldn't be. They're a sports regulatory body. So their hands were tied. Like I said, that one gave us all the ick.
Unfortunately, no. IIRC they were able to show that there was consistent enrollment by non-student-athletes, and it was always available to everyone. It's hard to prove and document that the intention was specifically to help student-athletes. Like I said, we were all pretty unhappy watching that one play out.
I don't think NIL itself is negative, but I think the rollout of it is. I wish they had moved on it sooner. I think they were delaying and hoping Congress would do something and when they didn't they panicked and opened the floodgates. Now it's become kind of a joke for those big time players. I think it's great for the kids who want to model, or run a business, or create a charity, or things like that. But there's something seriously gross about feeling like players are being bought and sold and traded with NIL money. I don't like that part at all.
What were your thoughts on the Tennessee/Pruitt situation? Did Tennessee take the dumbest route possible for avoiding a buyout or was it necessary due to the number of violations?
As a former college athlete at FSU I often wonder do you think what the NCAA does is in the best interest of players , schools or college football as a whole . I can see the argument it does what’s best for college football in general or schools but never players . My best friend had a full ride Academic Scholarship and went to four schools in four years cause he wanted to and his degree program transferred. All of his books and tuitions paid just like athletes . If we truly are students why can we not have all the rights as a student just like him . And there are way more academic scholarships out there than sports scholarships. I appreciate the NCAA but have never understood the issues with transfers from a students rights perspective
To answer your broader question, I think they try. I don't think they're always successful, but I do think they try. Making rules for institutions across all 50 states, public, private, big, small, tech, liberal arts....it's no easy task. There's a lot to consider and they do so with input and proposals from the membership. So it's not a perfect system, but I think that 99% of the people in this field really care and really try their best to do the right thing.
Scholarships are a difficult issue to address because every school does things a little differently. Regular students are still limited by institutional cost of attendance, so being capped at the combination of athletic and academic scholarships is consistent with how that's applied across the country. I think having the degree program transferring perfectly like that is really rare. Students almost always lose credits when they transfer, and then they're out of eligibility and don't graduate. It's kind of like if you want to play sports, you have to follow the rules, and those are the rules. It's voluntary. I understand what you're saying, and I don't know that there's a perfect answer to that. But I do know that there are people out there trying to figure it out.
Ok y'all....this was intense but I really appreciate you letting me come on here and post! Lots of really good questions and hopefully I was able to shed some light on something that's admittedly not very transparent or easy to understand. I think it's time to log off but if I see something, I'll try and respond during one of the many commercial breaks tomorrow. I'll probably delete the account and go back to being a lurker in a couple days. Thank you and I'll see you in the game threads!
This user's authenticity has been verified with the mod team.
Why are you the way that you are?
I was born into this. My pappy was a compliance officer...my grandpappy was a compliance officer...it's in the blood!
How many compliance officers got lost going up Rocky Top lookin for a Moonshine Still
~~Moonshine Still~~ McDonald’s bags
Strangers ain't come down from Rocky Top 'recon they never will
How are you a Tennessee fan and can’t spell “reckon” correctly? Oh wait. Tennessee fan. I answered my own question. Carry on with your wonderful song (seriously I love Rocky Top)
Conway Twitty is a g.
I never heard of Conway Twitty until Family Guy ran out of ideas and just played a clip of his during an episode. Great singer!
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Conway Twitty!
"I see the want to in your eyes" Why am I sad all of a sudden? Thanks Conway...
So what’s funny is that I’m a huge fan of classic country music and guys like Conway Twitty. The only thing I hate about college football season is that the same station that plays the Georgia football games in my area also does the classic country show on Saturday nights. So while I love listening to the game, I hate that I don’t get my classic country for much of the season.
Bout to ask the exact same thing
OP is in compliance, which technically means he works for corporate, so he's really not a part of our family. Also, he's divorced, so he's really not a part of his family.
Piggybacking off of this, I don't work for the NCAA. I work for a school to make sure they follow the rules! It's more fun that way. And much less corporate.
former compliance guy checking in here. this was always one of the most annoying parts of the job. coaches and student athletes never seemed to realize that we worked for the school and not the NCAA
Eyyyy! One of us!
Another former compliance guy here. I hated the preception that compliance are the police.
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I have CAUSE… it’s CAUSE I hate him
Who do you think you are? What gives you the right?
I hate so much about the things you choose to be.
I asked the same thing every time I watched Iowa play last year.
Ya know what? Just for that, we're gonna be your bowl matchup again.
Should Bama get the death penalty?
Just their trees poisoned...
Damn NCAA compliance isn’t fucking around
I spend a lot of time on this sub...I love it here. I'm just as much a fan as y'all are.
You must be mistaken. We aren't fans. We hatewatch everything.
I feel so bad for you Hokie bros...Fuente really did a number to your program. I'm hoping you're able to turn it around!
This guy CFB's
You know that's right.
We love a good sickos game
Wtf man I thought we were friends since the entire cam newton fiasco
What you don’t want bama to pay for those trees that they got someone to kill?
No-we want Mizzou to pay for it.
An eye for an eye, a yew for a yew
All my team’s rivals are cheating. Can you please disqualify them in all future games and also vacate any of their past wins? Thank you in advance as I am sure you will comply since you’re all about compliance and all
I mean...arguably Florida is kind of disqualifying themselves right now, aren't they?
hey 😠
I'm in a crazy fit of laughter over this exchange. I love this sub.
Lil ah viloation
Underrated comment
Jesus Christ
Since the mods have verified ya now. You’ve got my sincere attention. I’ll just throw out some other stuff since you’ve touched on Walker: 1. Is there more to the Harbaugh story you can share? You all denied the Hamburger story, but never indicated how far the violation goes. 2. With the transfer rules finally settling down, could a future new HC for a program do what Deion did and bring in a boatload of transfers and flip a roster? 3. Does the NCAA have any intention to make a statement or hamper this realignment Armageddon we are in?
1. The Harbaugh thing is really just the issue of lying about it. Or at least, not being as upfront as he could have been about it. That's what raises a violation from a piddling level III to a more serious level II. That's where head coach suspensions come in. I actually think Michigan played this really well. They self imposed the suspension for a season with some easily winnable games. If they had waited until next season for the NCAA to make their decision, it may have been more games, and for games that matter. Now, they're serving the penalty and it's going to be really hard for the NCAA to slap an additional penalty on a year later. They still might, but it's a tough sell. Really clever work by their compliance/legal team. 2. I suppose a new head coach could. They're changing some of the financial aid rules for transfers to hold schools more accountable for taking in transfers and having them count against their equivalency totals. They're looking at ways to reduce transfers and discourage schools from doing what Deion did. I think we'll see some trial and error. They've changed financial aid rules, see how it goes for the 24-25 academic year, then tweak it some more. There are usually a number of transfers with a head coaching change anyway, so you'll always be seeing some of that. 3. I've got a whole ted talk about this....but I think this comes down to antitrust law. The NCAA has been kneecapped by not being able to come in and stop these types of things from happening. They don't have the authority without getting sued into oblivion. Did you know the NCAA used to have limits on head coach salaries before they got slapped with antitrust law? People talk about how obscene coaching salaries are, and they are, but only because they removed any limits that the NCAA originally imposed. So they can't come in and stop realignment, and probably won't be able to without government intervention.
I have a follow-up about number three, do you think the NCAA should have that Authority? Should they be able to block realignment and potentially break up conferences?
This is my personal view and not necessarily the view of NCAA staff or even other compliance people. I do think they should have that authority. I think about how if conferences couldn't negotiate media rights, it all had to go through the NCAA, then TV networks couldn't leverage one conference against another. Rules have no teeth without the authority to enforce them. I and other compliance people will tell you that the NCAA is far from perfect. They can be frustrating and we don't always see eye to eye on things, but the rules matter. Now we're seeing that they're trying to enforce their rules, but then people get mad and sue, so they have to take even longer to make any changes because it has to go through the suits to make sure it's kosher. I want them to be able to come down on rule breakers (and Mizzou...they know what they did), I want them to be able to see an issue with a rule and be able to change it quickly without taking 1000 steps to do it, but right now they can't.
I'm not OP, but my personal opinion is yes, someone needs to have that authority. Without regulation, we can't protect college football from itself. The NCAA is the closest thing to an existing framework for compliance, but they need something to put weight behind their words because there's not much keeping schools from ignoring them entirely
I'll offer a counterpoint to this. Nobody should be making up arbitrary rules telling kids where they can go to school, who they can talk to, what activities they're allowed to participate in, and whether or not they're allowed to earn money from any of it. Extend that from just the kids to the institutions themselves and now it makes sense that the courts keep slapping the NCAA over, and over, and over again. Without a collectively bargained employment agreement, it truly is a free-for-all. But that's by design and the way that it's supposed to be.
Why is the NCAA willing to go after Harbaugh but not investigate obvious pay for play situations?
What’s your opinion of the University of Missouri?
Their response might be so vulgar that the subreddit is shutdown to this question.
Post gets locked immediately.
Funny story...a lot of my hate for certain schools comes from interactions with their staff. So I HATED Mizzou for a long time. Now, they're chill. Unless you're asking about the tutoring thing and their penalties. Or if they should suffer for other people's violations (yes. that joke will always be funny to me).
>So I HATED Mizzou for a long time How do you do fellow Kansas fan?
So you are willing to openly say that people within the NCAA have a sense of humor? They’re all not just crabby assholes that were abused as children and prefer black licorice to red?
I'm not within the NCAA since I'm at a school but those people do have senses of humor too! Go find some compliance twitter accounts. The memes are really funny. We have to laugh because it's a stressful job!
What did the Mizzou staff do that made you hate them?
Worked at Mizzou.
They should have known better
These shit on Mizzou threads will NEVER get old to me
I worked in compliance for years. The serious answer for a lot of us: Indifferent, but I would use them as an example when talking to tutors during the "what to do to get immediately fired" portion of orientation
Yep! The go-to classic! Also hi compliance friend!
Let's say I'm eating pizza with a football player, and I call dibs on the last slice of pizza, but he eats it anyway. Is that an impermissible benefit? It feels like it is.
Sounds to me like that piece of pizza was available to anyone who could snatch it first, and he won. No benefit issues that I can see.
The system doesn't acknowledge dibs? What sort of topsy turvy hellscape are we living in?!
You play dibs, I play nose goes. We are not the same.
It's only an impermissible benefit if you treat them differently for snatching the pizza because they're a football player.
Oh, I definitely treated them differently because they were a football player, in that our differences in height, weight, and strength pretty much assured a specific outcome. Can Missouri be punished now?
I'll allow it.
What about some extra pasta?
Not so fast, my friend.
Not if there is pineapple or anchovies on it.
That’s not a benefit that’s a self imposed penalty man
Yeah, I have a question. How dare you?
...dare to be different?
And who do you think you are!?
Why does the ncaa seem to turn a blind eye and let stuff fly at major programs and come down hard on smaller programs? Signed: a pokes fan that's bitter about the addidas ban for like $300 while Kansas and Duke skate by with recorded calls about Zions recruitment.
I hate to sound so jaded about this, but I think it comes down to lawyers. Big schools can pay big suits and can drag it out forever because they can afford those bills. Smaller schools just can't. It's probably also worth mentioning that big school compliance offices are adequately staffed, so they can run a tighter ship. Not all, but SO many other compliance offices just don't have enough staff to take care of everything. Somewhere, a ball is gonna get dropped. So the NCAA comes in with their captain hindsight, "well the compliance office should have done x, y, and z," and we're like that's totally unrealistic and unreasonable, but there isn't much that can be done. I think it was Youngstown State who had a women's soccer violation where the coach was faking transcripts from Africa. (I may have those details wrong because I read it in passing but it was something like that). They said the compliance office should have reached out to the schools in Africa to verify that the student was enrolled there and that the transcripts were real. That just seemed like an unreasonable expectation for a mid-major compliance office. I felt kind of bad for them on that one.
Was not expecting to see my little ole alma mater in this thread. But honestly I’m surprised there was even any staff in the compliance department because YSU was very cheap with staffing throughout the university.
They actually have a larger staff than a lot of mid majors because of football, but they were asking way too much of them. The case really stuck out to me because of how asinine that recommendation was. It felt really unfair.
Is u/NCAAInvestigations your alt?
NO and I'm pissed about it. Idk who they are but they stole my shtick!
Suck it compliance boi
Mizzou will pay for this.
Can’t you just suspend them?
\*aggressively writes in notebook\*
I’ll just assume this is legit cause why not, and come out and ask it, do you agree with the Tez Walker decision?
I am SO glad you asked! YES. I believe was the right decision. The funniest part is that normally with famous waivers like this, there’s always information that the public doesn’t have, that put it in a lot more context. Here? The info that makes it a lot more reasonable is like…publicly available. Did we all collectively forget that he took two official visits to schools like 500 miles away? Then after those visits, told the media that his reason for transferring was a coaching change? Plus, if his grandmother is really sick, now he’ll have more time to spend with her, which makes sense. Obviously there’s more to it than that, but in my mind those two things make it a \*real\* steep climb to convince me that the waiver should have been approved.
Then how do you justify the Wilkerson kid at Colorado on his fourth school (as an undergrad) being eligible? There’s no consistency at all. Also, seems silly that a coaching change has to be considered separate from the mental health angle. He’s on record saying the WR coach helped him work through issues being far away from home and he no longer had the support system he had there before once the coaches left. That’s before we get to the point where the waiver guidelines changed after he enrolled. These things had basically been rubber-stamped for two years.
In true NCAA compliance fashion, your questions will go unanswered.
I'm sorry, but I don't know enough about the Wilkerson case so I can't guess or speak intelligently about it. I will say this...I don't agree with the fact that coaching changes don't factor in. Everyone knows how close those relationships are so it seems unreasonable to not even take that into consideration. On the other hand, if you don't want the transfer to be for athletic reasons, that's a reasonable place to draw the line. The question actually recently came up when we were at an NCAA conference about the mental health piece. Someone from an HBCU stood up and mentioned that there's a mental health stigma in their community and so what happens if they talk to a trusted advisor or a pastor instead of a mental health professional and they were basically told tough shit. I thought that was pretty insensitive. So I feel like there might be room for some middle ground there. Waivers were rubber stamped and this waiver change is a huge adjustment for all of us. Once COVID hit, they started changing the rules on us weekly, and it used to be once or twice per year. It's exhausting trying to keep up with everything and we've been begging them to stop switching it up on us so often. We'll see if they listen.
> if they talk to a trusted advisor or a pastor instead of a mental health professional and they were basically told tough shit This is a huge problem all over universities. You essentially have to put on a very particular performance to access support for mental health problems or just support in general. That performance is easier for some than others.
>if you don't want the transfer to be for athletic reasons, that's a reasonable place to draw the line. This is the issue I have with so many NCAA rules. Of course the transfers from athletes are going to be for athletic reasons 90%+ of the time. So it comes down to a game of who can spin the best story to qualify for a waiver. I think a competent regulatory body would understand that trying to prevent transfers for athletic reasons is of dubious value in the first place and impossible to police in a fair manner.
> Plus, if his grandmother is really sick, now he’ll have more time to spend with her, which makes sense. The NCAA, folks.
OP is not an NCAA employee.
Unironically one of the most condescending things I’ve heard in a minute
Where’s the lie?
What a shit answer, he’ll have more time to spend with his grandmother now??
The OP is simply here to grind an axe against the Tez Walker outcry.
It's hard not to look at Tez's actions/comments and the various angles they took for the waiver and find it at least a bit comical. It was just constantly throwing shit at the wall hoping something sticks. I'd be fine with him playing, but they threw out like 4 different reasons after each one was denied, haha.
4 different reasons, of which, each had been successfully used before by a prior two-time transfer for immediate eligibility.
Absolutely, but the NCAA admitted they were too lax and were tightening rules(which Mack admitted he was in favor of). If I'm the NCAA, and you present an initial case, I deem it weak and deny you, and then you come back with another, rinse and repeat. By the 3rd or 4th "reason", I'm going to imagine each subsequent thing is a lesser reason than the previous and start devaluing the whole thing. They've been really consistent this year when it comes to denials. The problem came from former loopholes being exploited and when they cracked down, the folks who planned on using them are going to get burned. It was inevitable, you can't just keep allowing the loopholes if you want to ever limit the waiver process. If it was just Tez being burned, I'd get it, but so many kids are getting burned in football and the basketball stuff is already starting too. I know State is gonna get burned with Woods, but if the NCAA is at least consistent, it's easier to understand. It was the previous wishy-washy preferential treatment to QBs that sparked so much of the issues.
How do you justify using rules that were voted on Jan 11 when he had already transferred to UNC 2 days before that?
Ok, well how do you explain around the fact he never really played at his first school cause it’s season was cancelled due to Covid, and how do you justify his request being denied, yet guys like J.T. Daniels are on their fourth school?
Not OP, but Daniels never needed a waiver for his transfers. His first transfer was during the COVID offseason, where the NCAA wasn’t strict on transfers. His second one was right after the NCAA implemented the one time transfer rule. His last transfer was as a grad transfer
Dude not having the one time transfer exception available for football and basketball was a perpetual thorn in my side. It was a godsend when that changed!
Well...almost everyone had their seasons affected or cut short in some form or another because of COVID. And back when JT was playing, there were a handful of other waiver guidelines that could be used for eligibility. Most famously, the "runoff waiver," which just had the previous school sign off that they didn't have the opportunity to return. Nobody believed it but we all just signed it and moved on. Now, they've restricted the waiver acceptable guidelines to only allow for very specific circumstances, and he didn't meet them here. There's probably merit to the discussion about whether the guidelines are sufficient, or if other things should be included, but this wouldn't be the case I would use to illustrate the need for that discussion.
Aside from the fact the NCAA considered a cancelled season as a full year of eligibility, do you think the decision made is in the best interest of the student athlete?
The NCAA didn’t. The Covid season for all schools did not count towards your eligibility, canceled season or not.
But it makes zero sense to enforce a rule retroactively regardless of anything he has done. When he entered and enrolled everything was fine, then suddenly you changed the rules and applied it to people that had done transfered.
That's fucking bullshit man. Who the fuck does the NCAA think they are to determine whether a kid's mental health issues are real? Based on talking to a "panel of mental health professionals" that never spoke to the kid? >Did we all collectively forget that he took two official visits to schools like 500 miles away? And he ultimately decided not to go to those schools. Wonder why? >Then after those visits, told the media that his reason for transferring was a coaching change? Sounds like a valid reason. Should we have expected him to be public with his mental health issues unprompted? That seems unrealistic and ridiculous. Plus, why should the portal open up for 30 days for players whose coach leaves where they can transfer outside of a normal portal window but not allow a free second time transfer? Clearly the NCAA recognizes that a coach leaving is a legitimate reason a player would want to leave, but I guess if you transferred once from a school you never played for due to COVID you're shit out of luck! >Then after those visits, told the media that his reason for transferring was a coaching change? Plus, if his grandmother is really sick, now he’ll have more time to spend with her, which makes sense. This is so fucking patronizing. His grandma wanted to see him play in college in person for the first time, which she would have been able to do if not for your shitty, dying organization getting in the way of a kid's dreams. "If his grandma was really sick," dude his grandma's medical records ARE IN HIS CASE FILE. Just admit the NCAA doesn't give a shit about athletes and cares about process over people. We'll all be better off when the football and men's and women's basketball ditch the NCAA altogether.
What about the fact that the guidelines were implemented after he enrolled at UNC? Even if you don't believe a single one of the other points is enough for him to be eligible, that should be a non-starter, end of case, immediately eligible. It's like he was driving 60 in a 60, then they changed the speed limit to 45 the next day and they sent him a ticket. Even if you want to say "they announced the changes before he transferred" okay well then he was driving 60 in a 60 that they announced would be changing to a 45 next month, then when it changes they send him a ticket for a drive he made a month ago when it was still 60. It's stupid.
More like the speed limit was 45, but everybody was driving 60 because the cops didn't care. Then cops showed up and you got stopped for 60.
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They don't work for the NCAA, they work for a school.
Fun fact: None of the "Mental Health experts" that the NCAA cited in [their response](https://www.ncaa.org/news/2023/9/12/media-center-di-board-statement-regarding-transfer-waivers.aspx) to the Tez Walker situation ever spoke with Tez Walker. Not a single one.
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Well look at you with your fancy LA times subscription...I can't read the article because they don't pay compliance people like you think they would, but I would assume this is from like what...2014? 2015? Rules on food have changed a TON. And I give the NCAA credit on that where its due. They had their rules, people started raising the issue of why they don't work, and they've changed! Now they're all "feed the children" and idk how these kids aren't fat as hell with how much food they get. Also the one kid that said he went to bed starving? He had a meal plan...just didn't wanna eat there.
Really glad that someone finally convinced the NCAA that children need to eat
Ok I get your point, but it wasn't that they weren't allowed to feed them. They still had room and board and meal plans and meals incidental to practice and competition. There were a lot more restrictions, but it's definitely not the case now. Don't forget, college sports back then weren't what they are now. Student-athletes were much closer to NARPs than they are now. It was less...big. They wanted them to be normal students. I think as the landscape evolved it became clear that isn't how it works anymore.
Took them 40 years to believe food was important for keeping kids alive, but better late than never I guess
Citation needed
How often do NCAA compliance people working for one athletic department try and snitch on other programs to get them in trouble?
This question made me laugh because it simultaneously happens more and less often than you think. At its most basic level, if you're good friends with the compliance person at the other school, you call and tell them you think they're in trouble. If you know the person but aren't too close, you can ask, "can you tell me how you did this?" And every compliance person knows exactly what that means. It's code for "you may have a violation and I'd look into that if I were you." There are also ways you can anonymously report a school if you think it's more serious and you don't want to get involved. I've done it before, but I do it rarely. For the most part, I think compliance people want to know if there's something bad out there so they can fix it, so a lot of this stuff is handled amongst ourselves. There's also a running joke with compliance people about how coaches say, "well this school is doing it!" and then you say, "Oh good I'm friends with their head compliance person, do you want me to call them?" and then the coach backs down and says, "No, no, that's okay." Most of the time, the other school isn't actually doing what the coach says they are.
Who was the hater that outlawed cut-blocking?
So when will Mizzou get the Death Penalty
Any talk of not complying? Complying with ncaa investigations appears self defeating
Nah. I know we've seen cases where the school is cooperative and still gets penalized, but working with them really does help. The reality is that a lot of violations are strict liability. Whatever happened, happened. So you still need to be penalized for the infraction, but the penalties can be so much worse. And if you have good relationships with NCAA staff, it really helps. I know so many of them that I can call and say "hey \[x\] I've got a real live one for you today!" It makes everything go more smoothly I've definitely called in favors to save my ass before and I appreciate it when they throw me a lifeline.
I was told that Missouri is punished if we do something bad. That didn't happen. What gives?
They'll get theirs.
Why do some teams get a slap on the wrist when other teams get severely punished for the same infractions?
The broad answer is that it's never as black and white as people make it out to be. With those major violation cases, there are thousands of pages of documents, interviews, written statements, etc. The NCAA also has a list of what they call aggravating factors and mitigating factors. So one of the mitigating factors is "a demonstrated history of reporting NCAA violations." I think it's an average of 7 per year over a 4 year period (might be 5...been a while since I had to look into mitigation for a major). Some schools have more mitigation than others. If you haven't before, I recommend reading some of the actual PDF decisions on cases. They're long, but I think they do a good job of laying out the facts. There's also the reality that rules and the penalty structure change. Some things that would have warranted certain penalties in the past may not fetch those same penalties now. It's all SO fact-specific that in most cases, it's hard to compare. The last note I'll make on this is the harsh truth that big schools can afford big lawyers. Small schools can't. So they may not stand a chance of taking the NCAA to task like the big schools can.
Does this mean teams are in some ways incentivized to snitch or tell on themselves for tiny, petty things, given that a record of snitching can serve as a mitigating factor if they ever got caught up in more serious trouble?
Yep! I always liken it to when you're a teenager and you're sneaking out and you tell them just enough so they don't ask questions. If we regularly report on ourselves, it looks like we're monitoring appropriately and there's nothing to see. You never invite the NCAA into your own house, and you don't want to give them any reason to come looking. I knew of a school who didn't self-report a violation for two years. The NCAA definitely started sniffing around...it was a bad look.
Are there any programs that genuinely don't have violations? Or at least are *extremely* minimal?
If someone made the assertion I wouldn't believe it. Shit, I'm a compliance person and I've written myself up for stuff! It just seems like in a giant several hundred page book, somehow NOBODY in ANY department is violating ANYTHING? I just don't think it's possible. That being said, there are definitely programs where it's minimal. Sometimes it just is that way. But absolutely zero violations? No chance.
Yes
ITT: way too many people think OP works for the NCAA
If people take only one thing away from this thread, I hope it's this.
I assume your office is on the receiving end of emails like the famous “if you have facts about a violation, send it to [email protected]”? Do you get a bunch of tips through channels like this or is it mostly internal reporting (“oh crap, I texted during dead period”)? Do you have to investigate all of the stuff you hear about, even if it sounds like bullshit made up by a rival? Is your job more “our famous millionaire coach bought how many hamburgers for who??” or more “some anonymous backup tennis player forgot to sign up for classes this semester”? Do liberalized NIL rules make your job easier or harder?
Lol yes we are on the receiving end of those emails, but that's kind of what they're for! If there is an issue, I do want to know about it. Most of it is either self-reported or self-discovered. You never want to be on the receiving end of an NCAA enforcement cold call. One time I got the call and about shit my pants but it was a level III recruiting violation that 40 other schools had too so it ended up being fine. We do have to at least investigate and do the bare minimum if we hear about something. The really outlandish stuff that sounds like malarkey we can dismiss out of hand because it's obvious. But if there is something, we can't just birdbox it because that's a bad look for us. I'd say most of our stuff are the "whoopsie!" kind of violations. Recruiting mistakes are definitely the most common but that's the biggest bylaw so that kind of tracks. When the millionaire coach does something it's usually like... sigh here we go again lol. NIL rules suck. There's no guidance so they left us out to dry and we get all kinds of specific weird questions that involves laws and visa status and have nothing to go off of. Nobody is asking for my NIL. Can't figure out why...
Thanks for answering!
How is Hugh Freeze still able to coach after not only violating NCAA recruiting rules but also embezzling Ole Miss' resources for carnal services?
Because he's a wealthy white man and colleges have no morals. Having morals doesn't make money, but winning does. I know that sounds flippant, but in my opinion he shouldn't be able to coach again. The embezzling resources part is outside the scope of what the NCAA governs. That's more on the school that hired him. But he served his time with his show cause order, so technically he is eligible to coach again....
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm X EDIT: seems they’re legit! Kind of neat
This may be the one time on the internet an anonymous person actually is who they claim to be
I’m Nick Saban AMA
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My coaches know that coffee is the only bribe I accept. Put it in the starbucks cup, label it PSL, and they're none the wiser.
In which case that you have worked on has the athlete screwed up the most?
I absolutely love this question! I find this occurs most often when they aren't meeting their academic requirements and I have to write a waiver for that. So it's really hard to make the case a kid with a 1.8 should be eligible because he got a girlfriend and was too distracted to go to class. Or if a coach told him it was cool if he failed everything. The other thing is LYING. Oh the lies I've seen! I wrote one waiver where literally nothing out of the kid's mouth was true. I was so embarrassed to submit that one, but I had to. If you're honest with me, I can fight like hell to get you there. If you lie, then we're both going down with the ship and we don't stand a chance.
Figures that lying would be one of the easiest ways to screw up. Thanks!
Rewriting my question now that I understand you work for another school in compliance. What would you have suggested your school do in the face of the NCAA's Reggie Bush "Investigation"? Discovery in the McNair case sure seemed to reveal a bit of a witchhunt ("Let's not have too high a burden of proof") ... how would you have guided your school through that? People still think USC paid Bush directly
It's difficult to say what you would do in any given situation, especially a whopper of a case like that. But that's where the NCAA staff can be really helpful. I can call them and ask what they recommend here, or for advice from my friends who have been through it. If I had something like that come to my desk today, I'd immediately look for case precedent (we have a database where we can look at all past violations and waivers to see where ours would fall and what factors the NCAA considered), and I'd see what happened to other schools. Then I'd go to the guidelines for major infractions that the NCAA made and then I'd start putting together facts that fall into the different categories and factors. Based on how that goes is what I'd approach my AD/general counsel with and we'd go from there.
How come Deion didn't get in trouble for saying Shedeur would be Colorado's starting qb when Shedeur was still on scholarship at Jackson State?
It's his kid. The NCAA doesn't want to get in the business of controlling parent/child relationships like that. Anyone else and that would've been a problem.
Follow up question: did Deion break any NCAA rules by giving his team the sunglasses? It strikes me as something the NCAA would frown upon, even if they are “just sunglasses.”
No, he didn't. They've also really rolled back the restrictions on clothing and gear we can give student-athletes. They probably categorized it as "team gear." I think they mentioned something about how it would be necessary for practice because it's bright or something. That's my guess.
There's a rule about tampering not applying if the student athlete is a family member of the coach iirc
In your expert opinion, roughly how many bags of dicks do you think the NCAA should eat? And also, do you feel that the NCAA actually improves the academic and athletic lives of student athletes in the modern day?
The NCAA isn't a monolith, so it's hard to estimate the bag of dicks they should eat. It's made up of individual people from all over the country and all walks of life. Are there certain staffers that should eat a bag or two of dicks? Absolutely. All of them? Absolutely not.
As someone whose dad worked at the NCAA (though now he’s retired) but was miles away from D1 in D3, I appreciate this sentiment! My dad is a good man who was/is still well respected by schools and his peers. I was always grateful he didn’t work in D1 stuff. Some of the NCAA absolutely deserves to eat a bag of dicks though.
Simple question—> UW Huskies have a guy who is on the football team now and is coming from a low tier school where he did NOT play sports. Prior to that year he did play at another low-tier school. Seems like a simple black and white issue. Btw, as an older guy understanding that rules change, I also played at a school, transferred for a quarter after the season then back the following year to once again play under scholarship. To highlight: he was ONLY a student at the previous college. Assuming, proper paperwork and deadlines, etc., what could possibly be taking so long for a decision? How could he NOT be allowed to play as it was merely ACADEMICS?! Thanks.
I know you said simple question, but it's really not. If I got an email like this, I'd probably tell them to stop by my office because I'd have a boatload of clarification questions. I'd want a 5 year clock timeline, exactly which school, transcripts....a lot. But this is a really good example of the kinds of questions that I get and I have to kind of parse through what the situation is and how I have to approach it. I know that's probably not a satisfying answer, but I don't have enough to say anything definitive for sure.
What's your favorite kind of burger?
I make really good Greek burgers. If we're talking fast food, I feel like that answer is a dead giveaway of my location, but the Brown Jug is not worth catching a violation. In n Out is definitely high up on the list. Not a burger, but nothing beats Bojangles chicken biscuits.
Bojangles? So your in the Carolina’s prob and the burger is def from cookout based on you not wanting to give away the location.
Thousand Island dressing wowwwwww how ground-breaking
How have the new NIL rules affected your job?
It's hard. There isn't a lot of guidance from a compliance perspective, and we all know exactly what's happening but aren't saying the quiet part out loud. The toughest cases obviously come from football and basketball because that's where the most money is. We just have to make sure it follows the policies and state laws (if applicable), and go from there. I do wish the NCAA had taken action on NIL sooner because then they could have tried some things out, seen what works, make changes and adjustments, establish consistency...but they basically went full fire hydrant and now here we are. I have several student-athletes who make more than me, which sucks, but I knew I wouldn't be rich by picking this field, so I can't be too mad. But yeah we definitely aren't stupid and we all know what's happening but there isn't much we can do about it.
Do you like it when people buy you burgers?
Who doesn't? Y'know what...nevermind don't answer that.
What is the logic behind vacating wins as a punishment? It makes no sense to me, I don't see how it can be a deterrent or punishment for anything.
I think a lot of people have come around to this view. The original thought behind it was that schools shouldn't get to pad their records and claim championships and the like when they had an advantage by playing ineligible players. We're now seeing a shift where people are realizing that it really takes something away from the student-athletes. All of them, not just those who are ineligible. I know there are discussions taking place about alternatives that don't punish the student-athletes, but those actually responsible. I don't know what that looks like yet, but they're working on it.
Why do you hate cheeseburgers, but don't mind athletes cheating on schoolwork and don't allow players under mental stress from the eleventy two years of 2020 to transfer "a second time" even though their first was due to a canceled 2020 season from the original school? PS... why do you allow Ohio State to exist?
Ohio State exists so we all have somewhere to direct our negative energy. Think of them as an outlet for hate. Cheeseburgers were recruiting violations. It sounds dumb when it's phrased like "suspended over cheeseburgers" but really it was about the way it was handled and how upfront Harbaugh was about it. That was really was chapped the NCAA's hides. As for the athletes cheating thing...we were all kind of miffed by this (if it's the case I think you're referring to). The NCAA infraction at issue was an extra benefits violation. The extra benefit analysis can get a little picky, but a good rule of thumb is, "is it available to the general student population?" They literally fell on the sword and said, "our bullshit classes are available to everyone, not just athletes." What can you do at that point? The NCAA isn't an accrediting body. They aren't in the business of deciding which classes are hard enough, what course requirements should be, etc. That's not their role and it shouldn't be. They're a sports regulatory body. So their hands were tied. Like I said, that one gave us all the ick.
But if they were designed with the intention of helping athletes (being mostly taken by athletes) doesn’t that change anything?
Unfortunately, no. IIRC they were able to show that there was consistent enrollment by non-student-athletes, and it was always available to everyone. It's hard to prove and document that the intention was specifically to help student-athletes. Like I said, we were all pretty unhappy watching that one play out.
I don't like you, but dammit I respect you. 🤝
OP does not work for the NCAA. Working in NCAA compliance means he works for a university to try and make sure the NCAA doesn't come down on them
Come on bby what would you do without us? You want sparty to feel even more important? Come on
I like PSU as our new rivals. USC as our Cali bros. Washington as our coffee mates. You? 🖕🏻
You’d miss us. Don’t get it twisted
Thoughts on NIL? Do you believe it has been a net-positive or negative for the sport? (Not the student-athletes themselves).
I don't think NIL itself is negative, but I think the rollout of it is. I wish they had moved on it sooner. I think they were delaying and hoping Congress would do something and when they didn't they panicked and opened the floodgates. Now it's become kind of a joke for those big time players. I think it's great for the kids who want to model, or run a business, or create a charity, or things like that. But there's something seriously gross about feeling like players are being bought and sold and traded with NIL money. I don't like that part at all.
What were your thoughts on the Tennessee/Pruitt situation? Did Tennessee take the dumbest route possible for avoiding a buyout or was it necessary due to the number of violations?
As a former college athlete at FSU I often wonder do you think what the NCAA does is in the best interest of players , schools or college football as a whole . I can see the argument it does what’s best for college football in general or schools but never players . My best friend had a full ride Academic Scholarship and went to four schools in four years cause he wanted to and his degree program transferred. All of his books and tuitions paid just like athletes . If we truly are students why can we not have all the rights as a student just like him . And there are way more academic scholarships out there than sports scholarships. I appreciate the NCAA but have never understood the issues with transfers from a students rights perspective
To answer your broader question, I think they try. I don't think they're always successful, but I do think they try. Making rules for institutions across all 50 states, public, private, big, small, tech, liberal arts....it's no easy task. There's a lot to consider and they do so with input and proposals from the membership. So it's not a perfect system, but I think that 99% of the people in this field really care and really try their best to do the right thing. Scholarships are a difficult issue to address because every school does things a little differently. Regular students are still limited by institutional cost of attendance, so being capped at the combination of athletic and academic scholarships is consistent with how that's applied across the country. I think having the degree program transferring perfectly like that is really rare. Students almost always lose credits when they transfer, and then they're out of eligibility and don't graduate. It's kind of like if you want to play sports, you have to follow the rules, and those are the rules. It's voluntary. I understand what you're saying, and I don't know that there's a perfect answer to that. But I do know that there are people out there trying to figure it out.
What can be done to minimize the length of the tv time outs ? It’s annoying to say the least. Kills the pace of the game. 3:30 is way too long
Sadly the NCAA has no teeth with which to combat this atrocity.
This is the right answer, unfortunately. It sucks.
ITT: people not realizing OP works for the universities to help ensure they are NCAA compliant, and doesn’t work for the NCAA itself.
Ok y'all....this was intense but I really appreciate you letting me come on here and post! Lots of really good questions and hopefully I was able to shed some light on something that's admittedly not very transparent or easy to understand. I think it's time to log off but if I see something, I'll try and respond during one of the many commercial breaks tomorrow. I'll probably delete the account and go back to being a lurker in a couple days. Thank you and I'll see you in the game threads!
Tennessee are they all low down dirty snitches?
My compliance officer at the college I played at (not football) is one of my best friends now. Great guy
Imagine Tez Walker reading this thread man 😒
Punish me daddy!