Irish Under Investigation?

May 6, 1999 / 2:59 PM EDT / CBS/AP

Notre Dame, fearing a major investigation of its football program, hired a law firm to represent it before the NCAA Committee on Infractions.

School spokesman Dennis Moore said Notre Dame had been confident the gifts and trips booster Kimberly Dunbar showered upon up to a dozen current and former Irish players would be considered a secondary violation by the NCAA. But the school has to appear June 4 before the committee, which usually handles only major infractions.

"How could we be confident of that? The enforcement staff has recommended that the violation be secondary, but the committee on infractions say they want to hold a hearing and they don't hold a hearing when they don't regard it as potentially major," Moore said.

The firm of Bond, Schoeneck &; King has an office near the NCAA in Overland Park, Kan., and specializes in assisting colleges under investigation by the NCAA.

The university now has less than a month to fight the possibility it will be sanctioned for a major violation for the first time.

"We have to go in front of a hearing. If you have to participate in a hearing in any situation like this, it's something to worry about," Moore said.

Also Wednesday, ESPN reported that Dunbar took boyfriend Jarvis Edison, with whom she had a child, on a $10,000 trip to Las Vegas in 1997 -- along with fellow player Allen Rossum and his girlfriend -- to see the Evander Holyfield-Mike Tyson fight. According to the report, which cited unidentified sources, Dunbar paid $500 for the fight tickets through a South Bend ticket agency.

Moore said the university is aware of the trip and has forwarded all information on Dunbar's relationship with players, including various trips and gifts, to the NCAA.

Though court documents outline a series of trips Dunbar took with players and others, the NCAA has informed the university it is only interested in trips and gifts she purchased after June 1995. That is when the NCAA determined Dunbar became a Notre Dame booster through her membership in the now-defunct Quarterback Club.

One of those trips includes a 1995 weekend in Las Vegas that Dunbar took with then-boyfriend Derrick Mayes. She purchased three round-trip tickets for $1,836 apiece and paid $756 for their stay at the Luxor in Las Vegas, according to court documents.

NCAA enforcement officials sent a recommendation to the committee on infractions last month that the contact be considered secondary violations. But the committee decided to hear the case as if there were major infractions, prompting fears the school could be cited for lack of institutional control and lose scholarships, recruiting days or TV privileges.

"No judgments have been made, except that it seems a little more serious than a secondary violation, and we want the university to respond and the enforcement saff to investigate a little more further to find out what occurred," said David Swank, an Oklahoma law professor who heads the committee.

It's rare for the committee to hold a hearing in cases where enforcement officials recommend the infractions be considered secondary. David Smrt, head of the NCAA's enforcement division, said a handful of the 1,500 discipline cases the NCAA handles each year go before the committee.

Dunbar is serving a four-year prison term at the Indiana Women's Prison for embezzling more than $1.4 million from her former employer, Jerry Dominiak.

He has sued Dunbar's mother, sister and five former Notre Dame players -- Edison, Lee Becton, Ray Zellars, Mayes and Kinnon Tatum -- to recoup some of the money she embezzled from Dominiack Mechanical Inc. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday in South Bend to hear Mayes' request for a summary judgment in his favor.