Following penalties laid out by the NCAA Infractions committee earlier this year, the Athletic Department reports it has been meeting all requirements requested by the committee.
These penalties stem from violations accrued by the men’s basketball team in the 2008-2009 season while Rick Herdes was coach.
Among these requirements was a $2,500 fine, which was paid by the athletic department on March 2.
The money to pay for the fine came from an account that held $9,000 dollars. The money, frozen and unusable, was set aside for each individual athlete when the men’s basketball team competed at the regional championship in the 2008-2009 season.
Athletic Director Jon Mark Hall said the rest of the money would be used to offset the cost of the regional championships.
When the athletic department self-reported the incidents in 2009, they offered to return the money given to them by the NCAA but were never required to do so.
“After looking into the process we went back and asked the NCAA if we could not return the money since we didn’t gain financially from it,” Hall said.
Along with the fine, the statistics from the 2008-2009 season where the violations occurred had to be expunged.
According to the NCAA Infractions Committee report released earlier this year, all wins must be vacated and reflected in all publications where the records are printed.
On April 5 and 6 the athletic department completed a voluntary NCAA compliance blueprint. Hall said this is a process where the NCAA sends a representative to the school for free.
The individual then combs over the processes and procedures of the department to try and find weaknesses that can be improved. “The process is entirely voluntary and when they come in they are just trying to help,” Hall said.
A report will be sent to the school in 30 to 60 days after the process is conducted. “There is no follow-up,” Hall said. “It’s the job of the university to take the report and make the suggested changes.”
When the representative conducted their review they talked about how great the department was doing verbally with the processes and procedures but there were some vital areas where written documentation didn’t exist where it should.
“We don’t have an actual compliance manual,” Hall said. “That’s something we are going to work on putting together this summer.”
The compliance manual will be a step by step for the coaches.
“The biggest thing we need to improve on is just having things down,” Hall said. “You want to have things written down for when the next person comes along. It’s not that we have nothing written down; we have a lot. It’s just that we don’t have some processes.”
The processes not written down are processes that coaches may follow in certain instances.
“We don’t have something written down that says ‘fill out this document before a recruiting visit,’” Hall said.
Hall offered Lois Stevens as an example of these unwritten processes. Stevens was in charge of the Physical Activities Center previously.
“When she was here, things ran so efficiently and when she left she had so much in her head, but nothing was on paper,” Hall said.
For this reason, Hall said, it took a while for things to get back to a smooth operation.
The compliance manual would alleviate issues like this from happening, Hall said.
The athletic department won’t have to communicate again with the NCAA Infractions Committee until Dec. 15 when the department is required to send in a final report outlining all of the requirements and requests that have been met.
