The NCAA News
The NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions is requiring Georgetown to vacate baseball records from games during 2000-07 in which 26 ineligible players participated.
Other penalties for the major violations included three years of probation and scholarship restrictions.
The case centered on the misuse of federal work-study funds to pay members of the baseball team for work not performed. The case also included a failure to monitor by the university and head baseball coach.
The violations resulted in excess payments of more than $61,000 (a total that Georgetown will have to pay as part of the penalties) to 26 baseball student-athletes. The committee stated in its report that it was troubled not only by the violations but also that multiple assistant coaches over seven years helped facilitate “the abuse of the work-study program through either inattention or misguidance.”
Those coaches instructed baseball players to record blocks of time totaling no more than 20 hours per week on their timecards. This direction was under the assumption that sufficient work would be assigned to justify the hours. Student-athletes recorded and were paid for up to 20 hours of work per week, even though they were not always assigned sufficient work to justify the pay.
University records indicated that the percentage of pay legitimately earned by the student-athletes during the seven years varied widely during different periods within the same academic year, from 10 percent to 92 percent. The student-athletes indicated the assistant coach assured them they did not need to be concerned with tracking specific hours because he would ensure they received enough work to support the hours they submitted. The assistant coach reported that he intended to give the student-athletes sufficient work to support the time cards. He was generally able to do so, but that became more difficult once laundry duties were shifted to another area of the athletics department.
The committee found the university lacked internal controls or systems to monitor the program or detect whether abuses took place. The committee also found the university failed to provide training for the baseball work-study supervisors and student-athletes regarding the accurate completion and review of timecards. Further, the head coach stated he delegated the administration of the work-study to his second assistant coach and had little to no involvement in the daily oversight.
The penalties, some of which were self-imposed by the institution and adopted by the committee, are:
* Public reprimand and censure.
* Three years of probation (September 2, 2009, to September 1, 2012).
* Limit of five equivalency scholarships for baseball for 2007-08 and 2008-09 academic years (self-imposed by the university). The committee extended this restriction to the 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12 academic years. If the institution has already obligated more than five equivalencies in baseball for the 2009-10 academic year, it may delay the initiation of this limit to 2010-11, in which case this penalty will end with the 2012-13 academic year.
* Financial penalty of $61,000.
* Vacation of all wins in which any of the involved 26 baseball student-athletes competed while ineligible during the 2000-01 through 2006-07 baseball seasons.
The members of the Committee on Infractions who reviewed this case include Paul Dee, lecturer of law and education at Miami (Florida) and formerly the institution’s athletics director and general counsel. He is the chair of the Committee on Infractions. Other members are John S. Black, attorney; Eileen Jennings, general counsel at Central Michigan; Dennis Thomas, the commissioner of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and formerly director of athletics at Hampton; and Andrea Meyers, athletics director emeritus at Indiana State.