NCAA puts Georgia Southern on 2 years of probation

Two years of probation for the university from July 7, 2016, to July 6, 2018.

Georgia Southern also self-imposed a $5,000 fine and a fine equal to 1 percent of the football team’s operating budget.

In their first year of bowl eligibility, both teams won bowl games last season.

When the professor discovered the work, the student athlete and former assistant compliance director worked together to draft responses that state the student athlete was exclusively accountable.

A former assistant compliance director provided a student-athlete with a flash drive containing her previous work for a course in which the student-athlete was enrolled. But he later told investigators that the staff member gave him the flash drive and instructed him to lie. Coach Willie Fritz left for a job with Tulane in the offseason. After the interview, the school terminated her employment. “She also failed to cooperate with the NCAA’s investigation”.

In a statement released by Georgia Southern’s Office of Marketing and Communications, the school, “accept(s) the self-reported findings and we thank the NCAA for acknowledging our prompt and decisive institutional efforts to address this issue”.

The violations occurred in the 2013-14 and 2014-15 academic years.

In a separate incident that ran throughout the fall semester of 2014, the former student-athlete services director was found to have completed and submitted 10 extra-credit assignments on behalf of two football players. The NCAA said the papers were submitted without the players’ knowledge.

In January 2015, the NCAA gave GS a written notice of inquiry, and a month later GS fired the assistant director of student-athlete services. Wise stated the university’s actions demonstrated that they have a culture of compliance in line with NCAA standards.

In the Georgia Southern case, the NCAA determined the staff members provided “impermissible academic assistance” rather than having committed “academic misconduct”. This required any school that employed the two staff members to appear before a panel of the Committee of Infractions.

Three-year show-cause orders also were levied on the two former Georgia Southern employees.

“We want administrators to have some degree of flexibility in implementing these rules, but they must be mindful that rest is important to a student’s health, in addition to their athletic and academic performance”. More than 40 percent of football and basketball players said they wanted an additional day off per week beyond the one they have now, and most athletes indicated they would appreciate two weeks off at the end of a season.

A vacation of records in which student-athletes participated while ineligible.