Anytime the NCAA issues penalties, there's going to be a public reaction. Some people will be thoughtful; some won't. The scum comes to the top when the teapot boils.
We certainly made mistakes:
1. Failing to supervise CFS internship hours; failing to discover extra benefits paid to student athletes by someone operating under the Athletic Department's nose in 2005 and 2006; and taking 2 years 5 months to investigate and report these failures - no excuses;
2. Writing a paper for Fab's grade change and deleting it (deception) ... this was academic fraud -- no excuses;
3. Failing to follow our own (voluntary) drug policy and waiting until 2009 to conform it to current practices - no excuses.
Here's what you WON'T FIND in the NCAA's report:
YMCA
1. Both the YMCA and the Booster (who cooperated) dispute the NCAA's conclusions and have publicly stated that SA's CFS internship hours were monitored.
2. SU also removed academic credit from SA's whose hours could not be verified, and rescinded at least one SA's diploma;
3. No SA's participated in competition after receiving extra benefits from the booster.
ACADEMIC MATTERS
1. Fab was suspended as soon as his academic eligibility was in question;
2. Fab remained suspended after improprieties with his grade change request were discovered and never played in the NCAA's that year;
3. The "extra assistance" supposedly given to other SA's was an NCAA conclusion unsupported by SU's internal academic standards, and in each case after the circumstances were investigated, the SA's were found not to have violated academic policy.
DRUG POLICY
1. Schools are not required to have a policy at all. If they do, they're supposed to follow it, but in SU's case, the "violations" (testing sent to the AD, not JB; and some athletes allowed to participate after positive tests) all involved low-level marijuana use ... common among students across the country;
2. Sending drug test information to the AD instead of the coach represented an improvement in Drug policy enforcement at SU; and
3. Fining the University $1M and suspending the coach for half a season for violating a policy that IS NOT EVEN REQUIRED at other institutions is completely disproportionate and unfair.
IMPROVEMENTS AT SU
1. The coach hired Kissel to clean up the program;
2. The coach told Kissel that Fab could be reinstated only if the "rules" were followed;
3. The coach had no direct involvement in any of the violations. Indeed, his primary areas of responsibility (coaching and recruiting) are unquestioned in a report covering more than 10 years.
There's also little acknowledgement in the report of the many steps that SU took to make improvements:
- Fundamentally restructuring the entire student-athlete academic support office, that now reports solely to Academic Affairs, in lieu of jointly to the Athletics Department
- Creating a new Assistant Provost for Student-Athlete Development and more than doubling the number of full-time academic support staff for our student-athletes
- Redesigning the University's voluntary Drug Education and Deterrence Program for student-athletes, consistent with best practices and peer institutions
- Establishing an Athletics Committee of the University's Board of Trustees, that oversees the athletics department and receives reports of athletics issues, including compliance matters
- Creating an Athletics Compliance Oversight Committee that includes the University's Faculty Athletics Representative, and a representative from Academic Affairs. This committee reviews the status of athletic compliance initiatives and monitors compliance
- Assigning oversight of the Office of Athletics Compliance to the University General Counsel
- Implementing new and wide-ranging enhanced compliance training programs for all student-athletes and coaches focused on NCAA, ACC and University rules and policies
- Taking action to separate employment with two former athletics staff members found to have been involved in academic misconduct; and
- Disassociating non-SU affiliated persons responsible for, or involved in, violations.
