🏈 The NCAA Deals With Another Textbook Violation

[TerryP]

In Search Of:

One new podium for rants. The last one was worn out during the last textbook scandal.

I can't help myself. This just ticks me off. When does the NCAA and the voluntary members realize that when a mistake is uncovered it needs to be corrected?

OK, before you start thinking about our probation, this time the improper benefits with textbooks is not at UA; it's at Nebraska.

"Nebraska announced on Tuesday that is has self-reported NCAA violations regarding student-athletes receiving impermissible textbooks. Under NCAA rules players can receive required textbooks, but are not able to receive the benefit of the ones recommended for the course.

The university's compliance department found 248 student-athletes received impermissible textbooks between the spring of 2007 and the fall of 2010. The total value of the textbooks reportedly comes to $27,869.47. The school said 181 of the student-athletes received less than $100 worth of benefits, while the total value for the remaining 57 was more." -CBS Sports.com.

Read More Here...

 

[shipley00]

Ummm, No, they didn't sell them for money. That said, I'm not sure how athletic scholarships work with purchasing of books etc, but did they receive a credit if and when they returned the books? If so, what did they use that credit to buy? Last I checked you can get more than books at a the on/off campus book store. I'm not saying they did, but that is the type of information they should be looking for. Perhaps someone here knows how the purchase of books works with athletic scholarships. Regardless, it was an impermissable benefit that non student athletes did not have.

 

[TerryP]

It literally is the same story as ours. Same scenario on disbursement as well from what I've gathered.

The book store is given a class schedule for an athlete. In that schedule is a list of the books needed.

A bookstore employee gathers all the books together for the athlete, they stop by the store and pick them up. The extra books aren't that big of a deal therefore the bigger number.

Now those athletes can stop by the store and pick up other books. It's just a matter of putting them on their "tab." (I received a book slip on a few occasions and purchased other school supplies—no shirts or anything like that, those purchases are prohibited—like pens, paper, batteries, etc. All legit supplies.

At the end of the semester they turn the books back in to the bookstore. They aren't re-sold/bought back like regular students are capable of doing.

 

[Tider27]

Thread title was scary.

 

[Duder]

Osbourne's was rather specific, eh?

I see the difference in the cases--their players (supposedly) didn't sell the books for money. However, that isn't the issue to me. You guys were hit because the books were dispersed, being resold was icing on the cake. I'm not sure that should be enough to keep them out of harm's way. The failure to monitor penalty wasn't referencing the player's half.com account...

 

[TerryP]

Osbourne's was rather specific, eh?

I see the difference in the cases--their players (supposedly) didn't sell the books for money. However, that isn't the issue to me. You guys were hit because the books were dispersed, being resold was icing on the cake. I'm not sure that should be enough to keep them out of harm's way. The failure to monitor penalty wasn't referencing the player's half.com account...

You've lost me here a bit, and at the same time it looks like you are lost a bit. You last part of that sentence, icing on the cake, wasn't the case. In our situation the books weren't being resold. They were turned in after the semester by the players that received them.

As soon as this was discovered, the football players were suspended immediately. At the same time our compliance office contacted the SEC and NCAA about this and the NCAA sent some of their people to T-town. The "investigation" was a joint one with UA and the NCAA interviewing the players.

I'll have to look back to see the exact numbers, but we had a very large portion of those athletes cited in the same situation as those at Nebraska; less than 100 bucks and recommended text books as the culprit. Off the top of my head it was around 5% of those found to have extra books that were giving them to friends.

Not one penny was made by any athlete in our case, just like Nebraska's. It was a book store employee situation, again. Therefore, the purpose of this rant of mine.

The "FTM" idea is one put out there by the CBS writer. It's his guess. If we compare the two situation like I've done you won't find any precedent for the FTM charge be levied.

IF the NCAA handles Nebraska the same way they did our case, UN will receive:

• Probation
• Vacated games/wins
• Fine

I don't expect UN to be hit as hard as we were because I don't think they are in a probation window like we were at the time.

 

[Duder]

It seems I have misremembered.

 

[TerryP]

It seems I have misremembered.

I do all the time. If you saw the bookmarks to sites, the things I've saved on thumb drives, etc., you'd see how bad my memory actually is now-a-day. What can I say? Over the years I've become proficient at forgetting things as well as burning brain cells. Which I'm better at is yet to be determined.

What really confuses me is the lack of attention paid by other NCAA schools when all of this was "front page" news. How on earth could another AD not stop and ask, "how do we do things in our bookstore?"

This text book situation with schools very well may be the most asinine ruling I've seen. We had players on multiple sports cited in our sanctions for things as minuscule as test booklets. They were a couple of bucks when I was at UA and they were required by my professors. But, according to the NCAA regs, it was/is an impermissible benefit. Those booklets for classes like Anatomy are ok, but blank booklets for English classes or any class that had writing essays as part of the curriculum was not ok.

Bottom line, it's a screwed up rule. But, it is still even more bizarre for other athletic departments to know this—even if it is only based on our sanctions—and still have to deal with sanctions and NCAA investigations.

 

[planomateo]

the question I have, seeing as how there were 19 sports involved, how does that change the game in terms of punishment.

 

[TerryP]

the question I have, seeing as how there were 19 sports involved, how does that change the game in terms of punishment.

It's a wait and see if you are referring to UN. They self-reported, it's up to the NCAA to say whether that's good enough or not. I'm not sure what penalties they self-imposed...I'd have to do research.

I can only speculate they'll be similar to ours, but to a lesser degree.

BTW, it's not the students that received extra books unknowingly that presents the issue, it's those that passed them over to their friends. That's where our suspensions came from.

And, FWIW, it wasn't our football team that was the hardest hit. It was a women's team.

 

[psychojoe]

To Terry's original point on this that every AD should have seen what happened to us on the textbook issue and looked to see how they handled such things; when the Tressell issue exploded on the scene my Longhorn buddy told me that Dodds (their AD) told every coach that if he didn't know about issues like Tressell's very soon after the coach became aware of it that coach would be history minutes after Dodds learned of it. Hopefully our AD was equally stearn on this issue.