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The National Collegiate Athletic Association cited the University of South Carolina on Friday for a failure to monitor its athletics program. The violations, which included impermissible recruiting, extra benefits and preferential treatment for athletes, primarily involved football players. Twelve athletes lived in a local hotel, considered a booster organization by the NCAA, for a daily rate of under $15 and nine received loans in the form of deferred hotel rent (the athletes signed leases to live there at about the same cost of local apartments, according to the public infractions report). The total rent added up to about $51,000. Also, two boosters, with whom the university self-imposed an “indefinite disassociation” as part of its penalties, provided $8,000 for recruiting inducements and extra benefits like cash and entertainment for football players and prospects.
The NCAA accepted the university’s self-imposed penalties, adding only a three-year probation period and a reduction of three football scholarships during the 2013-14 and 2014-15 years. South Carolina volunteered to give up three initial football scholarship for each of those years as well. Other self-imposed penalties include an $18,500 fine, limits of official visits in 2012-13 to 30 for football and 50 in men’s and women’s track and field, suspension of the head track coach from the 2012 Penn Relays meet, the withholding of an assistant men’s basketball coach from recruiting in December 2012, and the withholding of an assistant football coach from campus recruiting during January 2012.
Britton Banowsky, commissioner of Conference USA and chair of the Division I Committee on Infractions, said South Carolina’s aggressive handling of the case and its strong self-imposed penalties made this “one of the best cases” he has seen in terms of process. “When information comes to their attention, a university really has a choice to make. It either decides to fully develop an investigation and go above and beyond to the truth, or it tries to manage the information in a way to protect themselves,” Banowsky said in a call with reporters. “The university wanted to get to the truth.”
