Wichita State views reporting NCAA violations as healthy part of compliance efforts

Wichita State men’s golf coach Grier Jones needed to get his team back to Wichita. He also needed to know how to navigate the NCAA rulebook on Sept. 11, 2001.

NCAA rules state teams must return to campus 24 hours after the end of competition. On that day, nobody flew. Jones called Becky Endicott, senior associate athletic director, to tell her his team was stranded in North Carolina.

“He called me to say, ‘We’re going to break the 24-hour rule and you need to call the NCAA,’ ” Endicott said. “I did, and just said, ‘We’ve got a situation here, we’re going to have a violation here and we’re going to turn it in.’ ”

Jones and his team drove from Charlotte to Atlanta days later to board a 5:40 a.m. flight to come home. Endicott met them at the airport. The NCAA, as Endicott expected, waived the violation.

“We were stuck,” Jones said. “I wanted to make sure we didn’t break any rules getting home.”

That extreme episode demonstrates how Endicott wants WSU’s relationship with the 290-page NCAA rulebook to work. Education comes first and, when mistakes are made, report them and learn. Since January, WSU reported five minor violations to the NCAA, ranging from a Tweet from WSU’s university relations office to an impermissible contact with a men’s basketball recruit in late July.

“It’s healthy,” deputy athletic director Darron Boatright said. “It shows a commitment to compliance when you’re willing to turn yourself in when you make mistakes. We want to create a culture where when that does go wrong, it’s OK to say, ‘Hey, I might have made a mistake here.’ ”

Coaches, WSU’s administrators believe, must understand that the compliance staff exists to help and educate, not punish.

“The rulebook from the NCAA is an inch thick,” Shocker baseball coach Todd Butler said. “You have to have someone in compliance that you can trust, someone you can call and get an answer on the spot. Any good program with honest athletics, honest coaching staffs, very good compliance, you will see self-reported violations. Ninety-nine percent of the time, they’re minor violations.”

The recent men’s basketball violation occurred after WSU attempted to satisfy one part of the NCAA’s rules regarding paid recruiting visits and neglected another.

On Aug. 1, WSU associate athletic director Korey Torgerson received a phone call from the compliance staff at the Missouri Valley Conference. Peyton Allen, a transfer from Texas A&M, planned to visit WSU starting July 31, the final day of the 2014-15 recruiting calendar, and continue on the first day of the 2015-16 recruiting calendar.

“You get 12 official visits a year,” Torgerson said of men’s basketball. “The question that was asked was that if we bring him in on these dates, does it count toward ’14-15 or ’15-16? What was overlooked was the recruiting calendar, the fact that July 31 was technically a dead period, where you’re not supposed to have contact with prospects.”

Allen was allowed to start his official visit, with WSU paying for airfare, on July 31. He couldn’t meet with coaches until Aug. 1. He eventually gave WSU a non-binding commitment and is a member of the team and will redshirt this season.

“Had we delayed contact until Aug. 1, there would not have been a violation,” Torgerson said. “The question came back to me (from the MVC), ‘I’m not sure how you structured the visit, but you might double-check the recruiting calendar.’ I looked at the recruiting calendar, then I realized we had an issue.

“We looked at the question at the face value of the question — ‘When will the visit count?’ — and overlooked the part of ‘We need to look at the recruiting calendar.’ ” The first thing we should have done was look at the recruiting calendar, and that would have triggered some additional dialogue.”

The NCAA deemed the case a Level III violation, considered isolated or limited and provide no more than a minimal recruiting advantage. WSU will lose two recruiting days and one on-campus visit, limiting the program to 11 for the next year.

“I don’t think there was any intent there,” Boatright said. “… You have to go through the public part of it being a story for a couple days.”

WSU’s other recent violations, according to reports filed to the NCAA and obtained through an open-records request by The Eagle, included:

▪ A track coach who briefly spoke to participant at a meet, with the understanding the athlete was finished with the primary competition, before learning the athlete was to run a relay later. Coaches are not allowed to speak with athletes until they are done with all competition.

▪ A women’s tennis coach, after a coaches meeting to discuss NCAA rules, realized and reported an impermissible workout or “recreational activity” by a recruit.

▪ In January, the athletic department promoted season-ticket sales in an email with the photo of an athlete and the logo for a fast-food chain.

▪ A year ago, WSU’s university relations office and the Alumni Association shared on social media news, reported by outside outlets, about a men’s basketball recruit making a non-binding commitment. WSU is not allowed to recognize recruits until they sign a letter of intent.

Most times, the offending parties received a letter of admonishment. In some cases, the NCAA cut practice time or suspended contact with the recruit for a short period of time.

“We never want to say there are minor violations,” Boatright said. “We take them all seriously. But when a coach comes forward and says, ‘Hey, I made a mistake,’ or a staff member comes forward … and you go through the proper channels and you report it and the penalty, if any, fits the crime, it validates them to understand the process better, to where there’s not a boogeyman waiting to come down with a guillotine for every little infraction.”

WSU’s most serious recent run-in with NCAA rules culminated in January with Level II (significant breach of conduct) and Level III (breach of conduct) violations. The two-year process ended with the baseball team receiving one year of probation, a $5,000 fine and vacating 69 wins from 2012 and 2013 and an NCAA regional appearance. WSU reported impermissible benefits, clothing and gear, in November 2013.

As the baseball case unfolded, brainstorming sessions led to several changes in how the athletic department handles apparel and how it educates coaches, staff members and boosters. A white dry-erase board in a conference room in the athletic department is filled with people and groups who need to learn and topics for their education. Topics include letter jackets, scouting opponents, resale of old equipment and drug testing.

In November, Endicott and Torgerson talked about social media. In December, the topic changed to amateurism.

The compliance department uses Twitter for a daily lesson (an undergraduate assistant coach receives no compensation for coaching duties, other than permissible financial aid, a recent one said). Administrative assistants must research and answer a weekly compliance question. Coaches and staff members are expected to earn 24 credits each year for attending compliance meetings and watching videos. Compliance staff members meet with Heskett Center employees, the student newspaper and people in WSU’s financial aid department.

“We did a seminar with the dance team,” Endicott said. “We said, ‘Let’s start doing Shocker Power Hours. Let’s start doing weekly questions.’ If Coach (Gregg) Marshall wants to watch a video at 2 a.m., he can watch a video for 15 minutes. It’s really been kind of a bigger plan from baseball.”

Torgerson estimates he spends 40 to 50 percent of his time on education.

“We tried to analyze our educational efforts and even put more effort into our educational efforts because of (the baseball case),” he said. “We have good coaches here. You still need to educate in every mode you can possible educate.”

A routine of reporting violations also establishes a history with the NCAA. The NCAA cited WSU’s habit of cooperation as important when ruling on the baseball violations and that may have averted harsher penalties.

“The NCAA is set up as a self-policing organization,” Torgerson said. “By reporting those errors, you’re showing you have systems in place. If you’re not reporting violations, at some point you could be questioned whether you have the systems in place that are necessary to catch infractions.”

This story was originally published September 26, 2015 at 3:00 AM with the headline "Wichita State views reporting NCAA violations as healthy part of compliance efforts."