UK Uncovers Numerous Violations
An internal investigation of the Kentucky football program has uncovered more than three dozen violations of NCAA rules dating back to February 1999, school officials said Friday.
The school's report on the violations was finished this week and submitted to the NCAA on Thursday. On Friday, the university's athletic association and board of trustees were briefed on the content of the 35-page report.
The report now will be taken up by the NCAA's Committee on Infractions, which will have the final say on any further sanctions or penalties.
Although officials have said at least twice that some of the violations would be deemed major by the NCAA, neither athletic director Larry Ivy nor assistant athletic director for compliance Sandy Bell would provide specifics.
"The violations will be designated as major or secondary by the NCAA, and we will not speak for them," Bell said Friday.
Although the investigation did not find that former coach Hal Mumme, who resigned on Feb. 6, participated or had any knowledge of any of the violations, the report cited Mumme for "failure to exercise appropriate control of the football program."
The most serious allegations involved former recruiting coordinator and assistant coach Claude Bassett, who was forced to resign in November when Ivy was presented with evidence that he inappropriately cashed a check from a booster meant for Mumme's football camp.
Bassett later admitted in a live television interview to sending $1,400 in money orders to a Memphis, Tenn., high school football coach. According to the report, Melrose High School coach Tim Thompson later told SEC investigator Bill Sievers that the money was a gift sent in an effort to influence him to send players to Kentucky.
The report also found that Bassett:
"We found that a majority of the allegations in this report are the result of one person's misdeeds," Bell said. "This is not a person who did not know the rules. This is a person who knew the rules probably better than any person I've ever worked with."
Bell said 17 of the violations involved eight current players, whose names were deleted from the report. All eight have been declared ineligible, but the school will petition for their reinstatement as soon as any appropriate repayment requirements have been fulflled.
Neither Mumme nor Bassett could immediately be reached Friday by The Associated Press.
In addition to revealing its findings, the report specified a number of corrective actions and self-imposed penalties the school had instituted in the wake of the investigation.
Among them were the resignations of both Bassett and Mumme; the designation and hiring of staff members to keep better administrative watch over the football program and its camps; a reduction in the number of initial scholarships from the normal limit of 25 to 16 in 2002-2003, 18 in 2003-2004 and 22 in 2004-2005; a reduction in the 56 permissible official recruiting visits to 36 in 2001-2002 and 40 in 2002-2003; and the reduction in the number of permissible football coaches to recruit off-campus in a given week from seven to six.
"I've worked with a lot of people at a lot of schools, and I've never seen a process done any better, any more thorough and any more accurate than this one," said SEC commissioner Roy Kramer, a former member of the NCAA Committee on Infractions who helped the school with its investigation and report.
Ivy also announced during the briefing that a severance package had been worked out for Mumme that would pay the former coach $1 million over the next four years. Had Mumme not resigned, he would have received a total of $4.2 million over the remainder of his contract, and a buyout provision in the contract would have required the school to pay him $2.1 million.
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