Joe Kinsey
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Jimbo Fisher has been hit with a six month show-cause penalty by the NCAA for recruiting infractions. Texas A&M has announced the assistant at the center of this with Fisher was former assistant Jay Graham, who is now at Tennessee. Graham was also hit with the six-month show-cause.
From the NCAA’s statement:
The Texas A&M football program violated NCAA recruiting and countable athletically related activity rules between January 2018 and February 2019, according to an agreement released by the Division I Committee on Infractions. The head football coach also violated NCAA head coach responsibility rules.
The university, head coach and NCAA enforcement staff agreed that the head coach and an assistant coach had impermissible recruiting contact with a prospect at his high school. The conversation was impermissible because it occurred before the completion of the prospect’s junior year in high school.
Regarding the countable athletically related activity violations, during permissible weeks of spring and summer activity, the football program unintentionally caused student-athletes to exceed activity time limits by approximately seven hours.
Here are the penalties for the show-cause:
- One years of probation.
- A fine of $5,000.
- A reduction in football official visits by 17 days during the 2019-20 academic year.
- An off-campus recruiting ban for the entire football coaching staff for November 2019, which reduced the permissible evaluation days for the 2019-20 academic year by 19.
- A seven-day off-campus recruiting ban for the football coaching staff for the 2020 spring off-campus recruiting period and a 10-day off-campus recruiting ban for the football coaching staff for the 2020 fall off-campus recruiting period.
- The university ended its recruitment of the prospect.
- A ban on recruiting any prospects from the prospect’s high school for the 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-222 academic years.
- A six-month show-cause order for the head coach. The terms of the show-cause order include a previously served nine-day ban on phone calls, emails or texts with prospects in January 2020; a reduction in off-campus recruiting contact days by three for the December 2019 through January 2020 contact period; a ban on all off-campus recruiting activities for the fall 2020 contact period; additional one-on-one rules education; and a public statement from the head coach addressing the violations.
Read the full NCAA statement here.
Hi Joe,
Thanks for the article. I’m really just shocked at how the NCAA would ban recruiting from that particular high school for three years. I’d really like to see how that is in anyway beneficial to the “Student Athlete.” This type of ruling is why I believe that the NCAA won’t even exist in 20 years.
Have we ever had a tougher coaching pool than this? 3 perfect season National Championship Head Coaches. Coach O, Sabin,and Jimbo. Throw in Kiffin and Leach into the mix. Mulzahn always putting up a good team and Sam Pittman (Ark) rookie head coach will be tested by the best. It wont surprise me if whoever told on A&M came from one of those other teams. its just a straight out race to see who can get the best quarterback to make a national title run. Football should be fun this year if politics let it happen.