INDIANAPOLIS – In response to a decision last month from the NCAA Division I Infractions Appeals Committee, the Committee on Infractions has amended its show cause penalty for the former head men’s basketball coach at Ohio State University. The penalty was maintained as a show cause order, but reduced from five years to two years. The violations in the case centered on recruiting inducements and extra benefits provided to two international prospective student-athletes.

During its proceedings, the Infractions Appeals Committee upheld the substance and validity of the Committee on Infractions’ earlier findings from March 2006, but reversed the most serious finding against the former head coach based on the statute of limitations. This finding involved a $6,000 cash payment recruiting inducement to the family of a prospective student-athlete.

As the result of this reversal by the Infractions Appeals Committee, the Committee on Infractions reconsidered the original five-year show cause penalty for the former head coach based only on the upheld findings.

The Committee on Infractions stated in its report that the Infractions Appeals Committee’s reversal of the recruiting inducement violation due to a statute of limitations “does not alter the findings by the Committee on Infractions regarding the willful nature of the commission of the violations… nor the committee’s conclusion regarding his (the former head coach’s) unethical conduct.”

The Committee also noted in its report that the statute of limitations “does not alter the conclusion of the Committee on Infractions regarding the seriousness of the former head coach’s failure to monitor the men’s basketball program.”

The show cause penalty, which is in effect until May 8, 2009, states that should the former coach seek athletically-related employment at an NCAA institution, he and the employing school must appear before the Committee on Infractions to consider whether the coach’s athletically-related duties should be limited for the designated time period.

The former head coach can appeal the two-year show cause penalty to the Infractions Appeals Committee.

The members of the Committee on Infractions who heard the case are: Josephine Potuto, the Richard H. Larson Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Nebraska College of Law and chair of the Committee on Infractions; Richard Dunn, professor of English and chair of the English department, University of Washington; Alfred “Jim” Lechner, Jr., an attorney with the Westfield N.J. law firm of Lerner David and formerly a federal district judge, district of New Jersey; Ted Leland, the vice president for advancement at the University of the Pacific, and formerly the director of athletics of, among others, Stanford University, Andrea Meyers, athletic director emeritus, Indiana State University; and Thomas Yeager, commissioner of the Colonial Athletic Association.

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