Largely due to a failure to keep records of phone calls and the rogue actions of a former football assistant coach, Georgia Tech has been censured by the NCAA for an failure to monitor. The school also self-imposed two years of additional probation following the four-year probation it received after the NCAA’s investigation into the improper benefits received by a former football player, Demaryius Thomas.
The information was obtained through an open records request by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The NCAA is expected to release a statement of its findings in coming days. The AJC first reported on the matter following the resignation of Tech assistant coach Todd Spencer in January 2012.
“That is not something that sits well with me or with any of us here,” athletic director Mike Bobinski said of the “failure to monitor” reprimand. “That’s not a good-sounding or good-feeling term. It’s not one we want to wear beyond this. As I told you before, it is clearly our intention this the last time we ever go down this road.”
The NCAA’s two-year investigation, conducted with Tech’s cooperation, found multiple Level II violations, which are defined as a significant breach of conduct, committed in 2011 and 2012. Many stemmed from coaches on the football and men’s and women’s basketball teams unknowingly making impermissible phone calls to prospects. Coaches told the NCAA that they were acting under the incorrect instruction from a former Tech compliance director that they did not need to do so. Calls were often rendered impermissible due to a failure to follow a call-logging protocol.
Spencer resigned after it was discovered that he had sent numerous impermissible text messages to prospects. Spencer told an NCAA investigator that had he known the school was monitoring his texts, he would not have made them.
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