The NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions announced a series of violations by the University of Pittsburgh’s men’s basketball and football programs on Thursday, resulting in three-year probation periods for both and a three-year show-cause order for ex-basketball coach Kevin Stallings.
According to ESPN, both programs committed violations by exceeding the number of permissible coaches, and had systems in place to hide the violations from prying eyes.
Stallings wasn’t named specifically in the NCAA report, but was found to have been involved in allowing three staff members to perform coaching duties.
The basketball program under Stallings had developed an “alert system” to ensure that the non-coaching staff wouldn’t be caught providing coaching to student-athletes, and video of practice sessions was deleted in what was apparently a cover-up attempt.
“The former men’s basketball coach was involved directly in the violations, and he did not end the violations after being warned by athletics department administrators,” the NCAA release on the violations said.
Meanwhile, head football coach Pat Narduzzi was found to have been present at a practice when three former members of the team’s quality control staff performed coaching duties, putting the program over the permissible limit for coaches. According to the NCAA release, those violations went undetected because the football team developed a practice of playing music when outside parties were present.
“Football quality control staff members reported that they would make sure they were not near student-athletes when hearing the music,” said the NCAA release.
Narduzzi was handed a show-cause order that will keep him from two days of team practices in August.
"Pitt Athletics is steadfastly committed to integrity and NCAA rules compliance. A reflection of that strong commitment is the fact that, upon discovering these violations, we immediately provided a self-report to the NCAA and began a cooperative and thorough review,” Pitt AD Heather Lyke said in a university statement. “While disappointed in the violations, I am confident that our already-strong culture of compliance will help each of our programs avoid such situations in the future."
