NCAA puts TCU on probation after finding players were paid for work they didn’t do
The NCAA punished TCU on Friday after it found that 33 athletes were being paid for work they didn’t do as campus summer employees.
TCU reported the violations to the NCAA in June 2018, and submitted an additional report in September 2018, after it discovered that players were not clocking out when their shifts ended. The players were on the football and men’s and women’s basketball teams. Their job was to change light bulbs across the campus.
The excess payments totaled almost $20,000 over four years, the NCAA said, and resulted in 22 of the 33 athletes competing while ineligible.
The athletes involved were not identified. The Star-Telegram requested comment from football coach Gary Patterson, men’s basketball coach Jamie Dixon and women’s basketball coach Raegan Pebley, but a school spokesman said, “We don’t have any additional comments.”
The Division I Committee on Infractions handed down the following punishment to the university:
▪ One year of probation, which started Friday and runs through Dec. 19, 2020.
▪ A $47,148 fine. The amount includes the self-imposed penalty of $19,796, plus an additional 10% of the money TCU received for participating in the first round of the 2018 Division I Men’s Basketball Championship ($27,352).
▪ A one-year show-cause order for former swimming and diving coach Sam Busch, who exceeded practice limits and instructed team managers to act as coaches on numerous occasions. Busch contested what was originally a two-year show-cause order, successfully getting it reduced to one year. Show cause means that any school that wants to hire Busch before Dec. 19, 2020, must show why the Busch’s penalties should not follow him to that school. Busch resigned in February 2018.
According to the NCAA, Busch “agreed that he failed to promote an atmosphere of rules compliance.” In its decision, the NCAA said TCU and Busch may not appeal the violations but may appeal the penalties.
Busch, in a statement through his lawyer, John Long of Houston, said: “While the past two years have been very difficult, this has served as a learning and growing experience for me. I am also grateful to everyone who patiently waited for all of the facts of my case to come out. As the one year show-cause order that the Committee imposed does not contain any specific limitations on my job duties going forward, I am eager to resume my career as a college coach.”
The NCAA proposed additional penalties, including vacating wins and records, but TCU successfully contested those.
This is the school’s first major infractions case since 2008, when the men’s tennis program was given two years probation for impermissible phone calls to recruits and a failure to monitor. In 2005, the school’s men’s and women’s track programs were given a three-year postseason ban and two years probation for “impermissible inducements” and extra benefits to 22 recruits and athletes over seven years.
The football team’s last major infractions case was in 1986, when the NCAA placed the Horned Frogs on three years probation and cut scholarships for numerous violations, including payments to players from boosters. The men’s basketball team was placed on one-year probation in 1981 over recruiting violations involving one player.
In this case, TCU determined, and the NCAA agreed, that the on-campus employment issues stemmed from an operational issue with no athletics involvement.
Athletes were hired by TCU’s Physical Plant over the course of four summers from 2015 to 2018, according to the NCAA. The manager hired 10 to 15 students each summer to work and recruited current and former athletes to change the light bulbs across campus because it required balance and working at heights, according to the NCAA.
Plus, the plant manager “found it convenient to hire student-athletes, because many football and basketball student athletes remained in the area for summer school and athletics activities.”
The NCAA determined the players took advantage of the program’s lax time accountability, not always clocking out when leaving the job. Excess payments ranged from $74 to $2,687 per athlete, as some worked more than one summer.
The NCAA stated one instance where a TCU men’s basketball player should have been ineligible when he participated in a first-round game of the 2018 NCAA Tournament for receiving $256 in unearned pay during the summer of 2017.
But the NCAA had some leniency because of the “minimal value of the impermissible benefit.”
The NCAA determined the violations were “Level II,” meaning it did not involve “substantial impermissible benefit” or a “substantial recruiting, competitive or other advantage.”
In a written statement, TCU chancellor Victor J. Boschini Jr. and athletic director Jeremiah Donati expressed gratitude to the NCAA for its ruling.
“I’m proud of TCU’s culture of compliance that led to these issues being identified, promptly disclosed, and corrected,” Boschini said in the statement. “I also am thankful for our team who successfully collaborated to ensure that we not only resolved this issue but continue to send a message of strong ethical leadership at TCU.”
Said Donati: “We are thankful for the committee hearing our position and providing us an equitable result. The process worked.”
TCU’s probation
The NCAA had five bullet points in laying out what will be required during the one-year on probation along with TCU compliance staff members attending an NCAA Regional Rules Seminar.
▪ Continue to develop and implement a comprehensive educational program on NCAA legislation to instruct coaches, the faculty athletics representative, all athletics department personnel and all institution staff members with responsibility for the certification of student-athletes’ eligibility for admission, financial aid, practice or competition.
▪ Submit a preliminary report to the Office of the Committees on Infractions by January 31, 2020, setting forth a schedule for establishing (or continuing) this compliance and educational program.
▪ File with the Office of the Committees on Infractions an annual compliance report indicating the progress made with this program by November 1, 2020. Particular emphasis should be placed on monitoring student-athlete employment, coaching staff limits and CARA (countable athletically related activity). The reports must also include documentation of the institution’s compliance with the penalties adopted and prescribed by the panel.
▪ Inform prospective student-athletes in writing in the involved sport programs (football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball and swimming and diving) that the institution is on probation for one year and detail the violations committed. If a prospective student athlete takes an official paid visit, the information regarding violations, penalties and terms of probation must be provided in advance of the visit. Otherwise, the information must be provided before a prospective student-athlete signs a National Letter of Intent.
▪ Publicize specific and understandable information concerning the nature of the infractions by providing, at a minimum, a statement to include the types of violations and the affected sport program and a direct, conspicuous link to the public infractions report located on the athletic department’s main or “landing” webpage. The information shall also be included in men’s basketball media guides and in an alumni publication. The institution’s statement must: (i) clearly describe the infractions; (ii) include the length of the probationary period associated with the infractions case; and (iii) provide a clear indication of what happened in the infractions case. A statement that refers only to the probationary period with nothing more is not sufficient.
This story was originally published December 20, 2019 at 11:58 AM.
