Iowa Hawkeyes committed 15 minor violations

The Iowa Hawkeyes reported several NCAA and Big Ten violations within various athletic programs,according to KCRG.com and HawkCentral.com. Iowa committed these violations between August 10th of last year and the 15th of May this year, with all of the violations being very minor, such as accidental calls and simple unawareness of all of the minute, pretty annoying NCAA laws.

For instance, Iowa’s rowing coach accidentally held practice in the water back in August, and it was on a day in which he was not allowed hold a practice. The coach was on his first month on the job, and he claimed that he did not know about this rule. If you go through the violations, there are only about two or three of them that do not deal with text messages or calls. The only one that doesn’t deal with improper meals either is the rowing incident.

All of Iowa’s violations were minor, and they are basically commonplace in the NCAA today. Schools committed these minor infractions often, and Iowa and other schools will self-report them to the NCAA and their conference in audits. If you look at assistant men’s coach Sherman Dillard, he called a sophomore recruit back in the summer of last year and did not know the prospect was not eligible to receive the call. Realizing his error, he self-reported the call and notified the recruit that he would not be able to play for Iowa because of the violation. That kind of sucks, as the prospect had one less school to choose from over a harmless phone call. Yeah, you gotta love the NCAA.

Seriously, read through some of the violations without going, “Uh? Really?”, because the NCAA is just crazy. The most minute of errors needs to be reported by the university and can end up in not being able to go after recruit, but the law is the law I guess. Iowa had several infractions, but all of them are minor. Hawkeyes fans will also be happy to know that they are much less than the rival Iowa State Cyclone’s 79 violations.

Most of the violations made by Iowa dealt with errant calls or text messages, as the coaches were uninitiated that the prospect was not eligible to receive the call. I bet a couple weren’t accidental, including a breakfast meeting during a “dead period”, but the vast majority of these infractions were either harmless or accidental. Another day in talking about the NCAA’s laundry list of violations, and it gets almost comical. So I do have to thank the NCAA for the unintentional comedy that not even Greg Popovich can provide.

One more thing, you know which program led Iowa in violations? Men’s Gymnastics with three violations, good stuff. Football? One, because the school paid for a coach’s girlfriend’s dinner. Nice.