Michigan's Notice of Allegations from the NCAA

The University of Michigan received a notice of allegations from the NCAA yesterday morning. They have 90 days to respond and will meet with the NCAA in August. Here are the charges:

• Quality Control Staff (QCS) engaged in some type of "coaching" activity with football players. QCS members were not able to be in coaching meeting or give advice to athletes watching film, on specific skills. etc. The NCAA recently changed the rule that QCS members could now be in coaches meetings.
• The specifics around exceeding practice time allegations were very small. The NCAA found that there were 2 hours in out-of-season conditioning that where exceeded, a Sunday during the season where less then a hour was exceeded, and 20 minutes during the weekly in-season practices were exceeded.
• There was also an allegation where coaches disciplined a player or players for missing class during the summer. This is allowed during the season but not during the summer months. For example, a student athlete might have missed a couple of summer classes and had to run the stairs at the Big House (this is just a hypothetical example).
• Also a Grad Assistant had in-appropriate conduct during the investigation.

So there you have it. Here is my take:

First off, David Brandon handled the press conference like a pro. He is going to be a great addition to the Athletic Department. He was also very clear that the NCAA is not alleging any loss of institutional control, which comes with heavy penalties. These all seem to be minor charges on the NCAA penalty meter and have already been fixed internally at Michigan.

The QCS "coaching" seems to be the biggest of all the charges and what those staff members did or didn't do. There also seems to be wide spread confusion on the roles of those staff members across the country, since they just updated the rule that QCS members could now be in coaches meetings. Brandon was clear that those issues with the QCS have been fixed. Michigan's QCS members will not be in coaching meetings moving forward.

The practice hours exceeded seems trivial at best. Brandon said, there will be a new on-line system in place this Fall with work flow that goes all the way up to him and the University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman. This new system will track compliance practice hours to make sure they are not exceeded. The overage in time has to do with the definition "stretching" and whether it's practicing or not. (Really? Free Press you started this entire mess on over stretching? Well done, you guys really earned you pay check last fall. Nice Fish Wrap! )

The summer discipline and the grad assistant issues, should be easily cleared up with coaches education and personnel changes.

The next steps for U of M is to compare their findings with those of the NCAA. They will then respond to the changes in place to fix the issues and whether they want self sanction. The NCAA and U of M officials will meet in August to agree or disagree on the current changes and whether it deserves a harsher penalty. The one got ya here is the problems the basketball team had back in the 90's, the NCAA could see this as a double offense.

I don't expect a big penalty here, this is not academic fraud, paying players, gambling, and there wasn't any findings of anyone trying to deceive or knowingly break the rules (there is the issue of the grad assistant not being 100% truthful on his involvement) . The above charges can be found at any program across the country.

Update: the findings state that some of these charges are potentially considered major violations and that if U of M feels they are secondary violations they should state that in their response.