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Florida International University and the NCAA enforcement staff have agreed on all the facts surrounding the school's infractions case, allowing the Division I Committee on Infractions to make a ruling on the case without a formal hearing.
In its public infractions report released August 25, the committee imposed a three-year probation against the institution and a three-year show-cause penalty against a former assistant football coach. Those penalties are in addition to a list of penalties the institution already imposed upon itself.
The case was submitted to the committee using the summary-disposition process, a cooperative endeavor that allows institutions and the enforcement staff to submit joint findings to the committee. A summary disposition is used only when the enforcement staff and institution agree on all of the facts in the case and that those facts constitute major violations.
This case involved impermissible workouts scheduled for offensive linemen in 2002, 2003 and 2004. The former assistant coach scheduled three 60-90 minute workouts per week during spring and summer of those years, when it was impermissible for coaches to work with student-athletes. The former assistant knew the workouts were impermissible. The student-athletes participated in as many as 85.5 hours of impermissible workouts.
For his role in knowingly violating NCAA bylaws, the committee rendered a finding of unethical conduct against the former assistant coach.
The former assistant also included a number of other coaches in the workouts, a detail the committee found particularly troubling.
"The committee is troubled by the fact that none of the other staff members reported the activities to the compliance office or attempted to determine if the sessions were proper," the report states. "All members of a coaching staff have an affirmative duty to ensure that an institution is operating with the NCAA rules."
The failure to report those activities to the compliance office led the committee to return a finding against the institution of failure to monitor its football program.
In determining what penalties to impose, the committee considered the institution's cooperation with investigators, corrective actions taken and self-imposed penalties, which included:
The Committee on Infractions added a public reprimand and censure, the three-year probation against the institution and three-year show-cause penalty against the former assistant coach to the self-imposed penalties. Show cause requires any NCAA institution seeking to hire the former assistant to appear before the Committee on Infractions to determine whether his duties should be limited.
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