The NCAA Committee on Infractions has outlined potential penalties for rules violators in leadership positions beyond team coaches, including athletics administrators and even school presidents.
As reported by The Associated Press, Individuals who were active or passive actors in the violations also could be identified by name in public infractions reports. Previously, the identities of violators were kept anonymous.
Matt Mikrut, managing director for the committee, said Friday that the discussions at a meeting in Charlotte this week stemmed from the Division I council’s passage of new accountability legislation last month.
According to Yahoo! Sports, which was first to publish details of Thursday's meeting, the NCAA enforcement staff must have found a school guilty of “lack of institutional control” for a president’s name to be revealed. A school must have been found guilty of a “failure to monitor” for an athletic director’s name to emerge in a report.
The NCAA enforcement staff is different from the Committee on Infractions, which is an independent administrative body charged with deciding infractions cases and is comprised of volunteers from NCAA member schools and conferences and individuals from the general public who have legal training.
"Both concepts — penalizing non-coaching members as well as using their identities — is a way to hold responsible individuals at a university beyond those often subject to direct penalties: coaching staff members and, most notably, head coaches," wrote Ross Dellenger, senior college football reporter for Yahoo! Sports. "It is rare, though not unprecedented, for non-coaching members to be at the center of penalties."
The move expands upon a penalty enacted last January that targeted head coaches and their responsibility over violations committed within their programs, Dellenger added.
For athletic administrators, punishment could take the form of a ban from athletic fundraising or sports events, according to Mikrut.
"All of these measures strengthen the Committee on Infractions’ authority to further penalize wrongdoers at a time when the organization’s rules are under attack by the courts," Dellenger wrote. "Such changes could invite more litigation aimed at the organization, which does not create rules but enforces the rules adopted by its member schools."
