The NCAA dropped the hammer on the Kansas Jayhawks with a bunch of major rules violations, including the dreaded lack of institutional control, and signaled they are prepared to crack down on illegal recruiting practices.
The first major shoe in the fallout of the FBI probe into college basketball recruiting has finally dropped, and it landed with a splat in Lawrence, Kansas. The Kansas Jayhawks, one of the most prominent teams linked to Adidas in the probe, received a letter from the NCAA alleging multiple Level I violations, including a lack of institutional control.
Head coach Bill Self is also under fire, receiving a head coach responsibility charge, which is based on a rule in the NCAA’s bylaws stating that the school’s head coach is responsible for the actions of any member of the program who reports directly to them. According to the Yahoo article, Self himself sent texts to T.J. Gassnola, an Adidas executive who was involved with paying bribes to the parents of Silvio De Sousa and Billy Preston, two prominent Kansas recruits.
De Sousa still plays for the school and was recently reinstated after being declared ineligible for the entire 2018-2019 season, while Preston no longer is in Lawrence. All three charges could lead to major problems for the school, which is expected to contest the violations, and for Self in the long run.
Kansas has 90 days to respond to the NCAA’s letter of violations, and after that period is up the NCAA has 60 days to respond to Kansas’ response. That alone takes us into late February, so this case shouldn’t impact the Jayhawks’ current season outside of being a distraction to players and coaching staff.
The Jayhawks could face significant penalties down the line, with schools that have committed lack of institutional control violations in the past often facing postseason bans, scholarship reductions, lengthy probation periods, and vacation of wins. Self himself could end up staring down a show-cause penalty, which would, in essence, ban him from coaching at the NCAA level for the length of the ban.
This could mark the beginning of the end for Self at Kansas, who is 57 and has indicated in the past he doesn’t plan on coaching too much longer. Kansas’ case should also set off alarm bells for any other schools caught up in the probe, such as Arizona and USC, that major penalties could be coming their way as well.
How the NCAA handles this case against one of its blue blood programs could well set the tone for the future of college basketball recruiting. The joke in the past with the NCAA has been that they would find wrongdoing at Kentucky and hammer a smaller school for doing the same thing to send the message without punishing a marquee program.
Going after Kansas now sets a new tone of accountability within the NCAA, and it could have quite a ripple effect on the college basketball landscape.