by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
A room full of Florida Coastal School of Law students attended a symposium at the school Thursday and spent two hours hearing from three experts in collegiate sports law. Florida Coastal professor Nancy Hogshead-Makar moderated the panel that featured University of Wyoming College of Law Dean Jerry Parkinson, NCAA Infractions Committee Chair Josephine Potuto and Richard Evrard, an attorney with the law firm of Bond, Schoeneck and King, which specializes in serving colleges and universities under investigation by the NCAA.
“They are true experts in the field,” said Hogshead-Makar.
Potuto gave an overview of exactly what constitutes the NCAA on an academic, athletic and religious level. A past chair of the Big 12 Conference, Potuto also teaches Sports Law, Civil and Criminal Procedure and First Amendment Law at the University of Nebraska College of Law. She’s been the school’s faculty athletics representative since 1997 and has seen just about every type of infraction imaginable that could land a school in both academic and athletic hot water.
As a member of the Infractions Committee, she’s often at the beginning of the process in determining exactly what happened at an institution and when. But, her committee doesn’t hear about every dinner bought for a high school coach.
“We only hear cases of major violations,” she said, explaining that most infractions are minor and are usually handled within the institution. She did remind the 50-60 attendees that schools don’t get put on probation — the actions of people at or around the school are the causes of problems. “Florida Coastal is not walking around campus. It’s an entity. All the people associated with a college or university can act in ways that make the university liable for violations. The higher-ups have more liability, though.”
Parkinson is the Coordinator of Appeals for the NCAA, a position that was created in 2000. He explained why so much time often passes between the discovery of possible violations and the NCAA actually issuing a formal report or — in the event major violations are proven — putting a school or a team within the school on probation.
“After the Infractions Committee hears about the violations, after a couple of months a report comes out. The school then has 15 days to file a notice of appeal, saying they either didn’t do it or there was an excessive or inappropriate penalty,” he said, adding two more stages of appeals can take up to two more months.
Interestingly, once the Infractions Committee has issued its report, Parkinson said the scenario looks much like a courtroom.
“The Infractions Committee has to go before the Appeals Committee to defend itself,” he said, adding there have been 50 appeals hearings since 1992. “The appeals run the gamut because the infractions run the gamut.”
Parkinson said he’s been part of 75 infractions hearings and, because the reports are all public record, he’s allowed to talk about the schools that have gotten in trouble lately. For example, Cal. State Fullerton has been in front of the Appeals Committee three times in the last seven years.
“Baylor University has been before us multiple times and the University of Wisconsin is a three-time repeat violator,” he said.
Parkinson said football programs are not the top violators in the country. That honor goes to men’s basketball, which leads the nation with 29 cases before the committee since 2000. Football is a close second with 24. There have been 27 recruiting violations, the most of any offense, while 22 schools have been hit for providing extra benefits to student-athletes the student body doesn’t get. Fourteen schools have been found guilty of academic fraud.
Evrard and his firm are often asked to intervene on behalf of the school. They may help see the case from start to finish, but more likely they conduct an internal investigation into the allegations for the schools.
“There is no criminal or civil law you can turn to evaluate how the NCAA handles its business,” said Evrard. “The NCAA manual is a large body of laws with rules and regulations that are very serious. If those rules are violated, there are serious penalties.”
Evrard said the key to initiating an investigation is getting to the source of the allegations, then conducting a thorough and complete investigation. The biggest key, he said, is understanding what’s being asked of his firm.
“Outside counsel needs to know what the institution wants from us,” he said.
Despite a six-inch thick manual, Potuto said the compliance departments in the schools — and the NCAA — must allow for a degree of judgment.
“There is a big difference between buying a couple of dinners for a coach from a high school in the middle of nowhere that a school has never delivered an athlete to that school and buying a couple of dinners for a coach who has delivered 10 Olympic-class athletes to the school the last three years,” she said. “In the latter situation, you wonder what else is going on. Those judgment calls make it difficult for the school’s compliance departments.”
The following institutions have the most major infractions in the nation as of March 16. Dozens of other schools have three or fewer including Florida A&M (3), Notre Dame (3), Bethune-Cookman (2) Ga. Tech (2), Jacksonville University (2), Duke (1) and Yale (1).
Arizona State University — 8
Southern Methodist University — 8
Auburn University — 7
Texas A&M University, College Station — 7
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities — 7
University of Wisconsin, Madison — 7
Wichita State University — 7
Florida State University — 6
Kansas State University — 6
University of California, Berkeley — 6
University of California, Los Angeles — 6
University of Georgia — 6
University of Illinois, Champaign — 6
University of Kansas — 6
University of Kentucky — 6
University of Memphis — 6
University of Oklahoma — 6
Baylor University — 5
Michigan State University — 5
Mississippi State University — 5
North Carolina State University — 5
University of Cincinnati — 5
University of Miami (Florida) — 5
University of Southern California — 5
University of Texas at El Paso — 5
University of Texas, Pan American — 5
University of Washington — 5
Bradley University — 4
Clemson University — 4
Howard University — 4
Jackson State University — 4
New Mexico State University — 4
Ohio State University — 4
Oklahoma State University — 4
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa — 4
University of Arizona — 4
University of Colorado, Boulder — 4
University of Florida — 4
University of Houston — 4
University of Missouri, Columbia — 4
University of Nebraska, Lincoln — 4
University of Nevada, Las Vegas — 4
University of South Carolina, Columbia — 4
University of Texas at Austin — 4
University of Tulsa — 4
West Texas A&M University — 4
West Virginia University — 4