Study: Recruiting Violations Top List of D-I Infractions

College recruiting violations topped the list of NCAA Division I infractions over the last 61 years, according to a first-of-its-kind study released this week by Temple University’s Sport Industry Research Center.

The most common infractions between 1953-2014 were recruiting inducements (57 percent), impermissible benefits (54 percent) and other recruiting violations (48 percent), according to the study of 554 major infractions cases prepared for the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions. The percentages indicate how often that infraction type was part of a case; some cases may have had multiple infraction types.

“The NCAA has never compiled all this data into one place and to run these types of analysis,” Jeremy Jordan, research center director and study co-author, told the Associated Press. “We found it very informative to understand how often a certain infraction was occurring or how often a certain penalty was prescribed.”

Key findings included:

• 82.9 percent of the cases involved football and/or men’s basketball.
• Sports most frequently included in major infractions cases were men’s basketball (49 percent), football (47 percent), women’s basketball (7 percent), men’s track and field (7 percent) and baseball (6 percent).
• 84 percent of the cases involved violations by coaches.
• Most common penalties were probation (87 percent), public reprimand and censure (86 percent), recruiting restrictions (50 percent), scholarship reduction (46 percent) and postseason ban (42 percent).
• Power Five conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC) accounted for 40 percent of the cases.
• The SEC was the most penalized conference (8 percent of cases), followed closely by the Pac-12 and Big Ten (7 percent).
• Arizona State and SMU had the most cases (9 each).
• 33 percent of all violations were self-reported, including 9 percent before 1984 and 48 percent after.

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