Self Reporting Violations and the League
So the report of the 4 minor violations got me wondering, how does Michigan compare to other schools. Taking a very minor subset of schools I found that for some schools it's a regular process to vette their sins on a yearly basis to the public. Looking at the playoff pool last year I found that the 4 Schools all have self reported violations recently or regularly. Expanding my search to other schools I found that Tenn, Michigan, South Carolina, Oregon State and Oklahoma State have all reported violations as well. It seems that this is a normal thing for most major programs. The question arises then why do some report them and others not seem to. No Google Search results are found for Michigan State, Rutgers, and Notre Dame. Again, a small subset of the entirety of Div 1 sports. So the curious part is why? What is different about these schools compared to the ones who self reported. Are they clean? Are they better at hiding their faults? I'd like to dig deeper, but am at a bit of a loss how to continue. The Legislative Services Database (https://web1.ncaa.org/LSDBi/exec/homepage) seems to be where these types of things would be keps, but I don't have access fully to it and the little I do, I am not a lawyer and don't have the time to sorth through all the documents to figure out what exactly is being said or what it means. So in conclusion, I'm stumped why some schools get regular coverage or report their own violations and others don't.
All schools are required to self report. Basically the NCAA would rather you fess up, than make them work.
So for schools that have no self reports, either their compliance department sucks, or the media simply has not FOIA'd the data. I'm leaning towards the latter.
media simply has not FOIA'd the data
Ohio State self-reported 47 in 2014. https://t.co/W0j6SvtAZD
— Steve Lorenz (@TremendousUM) May 12, 2015That's across all sports, not just football.
One of them (allegedly) involved a 4-year-old sending a text to a recruit.
This is what makes the Free Press article so infuriating. Every school self-reports minor violations to the NCAA. This isn't really news.
The amount of violations is almost directly proportional to the size of the compliance staff within each school's athletic department. Ohio State has one of the largest Compliance Departments in the country and they routinely report 20-30 minor violations every year. The number was even higher back in the Tressel days before Tatgate.
The availability of the data relates to whether anyone in the media actually requests it through an FOIA. If you Google "OSU minor violations" you get tons of hits because it seems The Lantern does a report on it annually. Nothing comes up for MSU because nobody has ever cared enough to check.
The Free Press only cares about Michigan's reporting in as much as it can garner them page clicks by spinning the narrative that Harbaugh is running a rogue state in Schembechler Hall.
Michigan State runs a squeaky clean program.
Why do we get regular coverage for small violations like this?
HARBAUGH.
To have one of the most visible and prolific coaches, it comes with the territory. They can post these blips all they want because it still means HARBAUGH (IMO).
Now I have to see Buckeye fans on twitter and on the Big 10 Facebook page call Jim a cheater and Michigan is getting the death penalty... People really think this is a big deal because of the press its getting and its dumb.
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Tell your OSU friends they can write up the death sentence with their crayons.
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Michigan state never runs a clean program. They have more players arrested than any school as of now.
Because they're on the same "let's create a a story" bent that they used on RR. Everything is going well in Ann Arbor, so they decide to stir the pot.
The Legislative Services Database is more geared towards storing the actual rules and proposals under consideration as well as some stuff on major infractions. I think the NCAA lets schools self-report online, but I couldn't find a good summary of their case management system nor do I believe it is a public database per se.
It would be interesting to see a summary / history of self-reporting and what the popular violations are though across the conference. I would read that study definitely.
According to an article in the Lantern, in the 2nd half of 2013, the OSU Athletic Department reported a total of 24 minor violations to the NCAA. Of those 24, 8 were committed by the football program. They include:
- 7 impermissible phone calls made to prospective student/athletes and/or their parents, attributed to erroneous "pocket dialing"
- 1 report of a coaching staff member using a smokeless tobacco product during a game.
The last one is outstanding. The NCAA guidelines are so tedious and ridiculous, they outlaw coaches using chew during a game.
I'm guessing all those schools self-report, but the LSJ and whatever newspaper is in South Bend doesn't care enough to pull an FOIA to find out about it. There is no college team in America that doesn't either violate these niggling rules.
Sporting News is in on the Freep Act:
http://www.sportingnews.com/ncaa-football/story/2015-05-11/jim-harbaugh…
DO NOT CLICK ON THE ABOVE. IT IS A PURE CLICK-BAIT ARTICLE WRITTEN BY A HACK.
I actually emailed the imbecile "journalist" to let him know he is a click-baiting weasel.
Yahoo Sports also has an article up, and it flashed on my Facebook.
WTF???
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http://thelantern.com/2015/03/accidental-text-from-coachs-4-year-old-so…
They also had a quote from Gene Smith stating that 40 or so minor violations a year is expected from the athletic department. He figures that if the number is only 10, compliance isn't paying enough attention and that there is a problem that needs to be addressed.
isn't um just getting off of NCAA sanctions for going over the limit on practice as well as having too many coaches participating in off season work outs?