Richt won’t attend graduation at Troup

It looks like Georgia coach Mark Richt won’t be attending Troup High School’s graduation after all.

Georgia officials had unofficially contacted the NCAA to ask for permission for Richt to attend the graduation if Troup offensive lineman Chris Burnette would be speaking. But Burnette, who signed with Georgia last February, narrowly missed out on being class valedictorian.

When Richt did some checking around to see if he could attend the graduation anyway, NCAA officials said that request was unlikely to be approved.

“Mark still wanted to attend the graduation to support Chris,” UGA compliance director Eric Baumgartner said. “However, after speaking with the NCAA, they were comfortable with [Burnette] being valedictorian, but the NCAA couldn’t get there for [Richt] to attend the ceremony without Chris being the valedictorian.”

Richt didn’t know that NCAA rules prohibited him from attending until after he had promised to try to attend Burnette’s graduation if the lineman earned the school’s No. 1 academic honor.

Violating the rule likely would result in a secondary NCAA violation. Georgia athletic spokesman Claude Felton said, at least for now, Richt will not be present at Burnette’s speech. “If, for some reason, circumstances change, then I’m sure we’ll reconsider our position,” Felton said.

NCAA official Stacey Osburn said Tuesday that the sport’s governing body has not denied a waiver for Richt to attend because an official request was never submitted.

“Ultimately, the university decided not to file a waiver,” Osburn said. “If a waiver request was filed, it would have been considered like any other waiver request from a member institution.”

Will Georgia file a request? “No, because we have received verbal indication from the NCAA that if Chris is not valedictorian, then there would probably be no extraordinary circumstances that would be grounds for a waiver,” Felton said.

Burnette said Richt delivered the bad news on Monday. “He was disappointed. [But] I’m still thankful that coach Richt even tried as hard as he did to attend. The NCAA has rules, and sometimes there’s just no way around them.”