NAAC REASONABLE STANDARD Telephone Calls to Prospective Student-Athletes

Transcription

1 NAAC REASONABLE STANDARD Telephone Calls to Prospective Student-Athletes Relevant Bylaws: Telephone Calls Purpose: To ensure that institutions are engaging in appropriate monitoring, education and documentation with regard to telephone calls to prospective student-athletes. Monitoring Standards: Activity: Each sport staff must report to the Compliance Office all phone numbers associated with every prospective student-athlete and their relatives or legal guardians being recruited in that sport. This should include a written affirmation that all prospect phone numbers have been provided. Person(s) Responsible: Head Coach or designee. Frequency: As determined by the institution, but not less than the frequency with which the institution checks phone records. Time Frame: Ongoing, as needed. Activity: Compliance should be provided, either through institutional or individual phone records, access to phone records for any phone (i.e. office, cell, or personal phones) from which recruiting phone calls are made or received by a sport specific staff member or any other individual involved in the recruitment of prospective student-athletes (i.e. academic counselor, strength and conditioning coach). Person(s) Responsible: For individual records, Head Coach or designee. For institutional records, an appropriate individual designated by the institution. Frequency: As requested by the Compliance Office. Time Frame: Ongoing, as needed. Activity: Compare a sample of prospective student-athlete phone numbers submitted with phone records for sport specific staff members to identify calls to prospective student-athletes or associated individuals and verify that all identified calls comply with NCAA rules. The sample size should be determined at the discretion of the institution. Person(s) Responsible: Senior Compliance Administrator or designee. Frequency: For any individual or sport program determined by the institution to be high risk, monthly. For all other individuals, at least once annually. Time Frame: Ongoing, as needed.

2 Education Standards: Activity: Review phone call rules with all athletic department constituents (e.g. coaches, non-coaching staff, academic advisers, student-athletes, etc.) as appropriate for their roles within the department. Person(s) Responsible: Senior Compliance Administrator or designee. Frequency: At least once annually Time frame: Ongoing or as needed Activity: Educate coaches and non-coaching sport specific staff regarding institutional policy for review of phone call records. Person(s) Responsible: Senior Compliance Administrator or Designee Frequency: At least once annually Time frame: Ongoing, as needed Activity: Educate constituents external to the athletics department who, in the determination of the institution, should be educated regarding restrictions on recruiting phone calls to prospective studentathletes and/or their families (e.g, boosters, parents and legal guardians of student-athletes, former student-athletes, institutional faculty and staff, etc.). Person(s) Responsible: Senior Compliance Administrator or Designee Frequency: At least once annually Time frame: Ongoing, as needed. Documentation: Activity: Documentation of phone records, phone call documentation submitted and phone call reviews that have been conducted shall be retained. Person(s) Responsible: Senior Compliance Administrator or Designee. Frequency: Each time documentation is collected and reviewed. Time Frame: Retain documents for the duration of NCAA statute of limitations or in accordance with institutional policy, whichever is longer. Activity: Sport specific staff will document any calls made using anything other than an institutionallyissued office or cell phone (e.g. calls from a home phone or through Skype) or affirm in writing that no calls were made from any alternate phone. Person(s) Responsible: Head Coach or designee. Frequency: At the same frequency that phone records are checked (i.e. For any individual or sport program determined by the institution to be high risk, monthly. For all other individuals, at least once annually.). Time Frame: Ongoing. Activity: Maintain a record of the education provided to each constituency (e.g. student-athletes, coaches, other institutional staff members, boosters) regarding telephone calls to prospective studentathletes. Person(s) Responsible: Senior Compliance Administrator or designee (other than a sport specific staff member). Frequency: Each time education is provided. Time Frame: Retain documents for the duration of NCAA statute of limitations or in accordance with institutional policy, whichever is longer.

3 Activity: Develop and maintain written procedures that delineate and assign responsibility for all aspects of monitoring telephone calls to prospective student-athletes. Person Responsible: Senior Compliance Administrator or designee (other than a sport specific staff member). Frequency: Review documents annually. Time Frame: Retain the document, in its updated form, indefinitely. NCAA Committee on Infractions Suggestions or Statements: From 2006 University of Oklahoma Major Infractions Case pages 14-16: The scope and nature of Findings II-A through II-D demonstrated a failure by the institution to monitor telephone contacts with prospective student-athletes by the institution's men's basketball program [... ]. Specifically, the institution failed to do the following: 1. Implement adequate systems to ensure that the men's basketball coaching staff was in compliance with NCAA rules relating to telephone contacts with prospective student-athletes. The institutional system in place for ensuring compliance relating to telephone calls to prospects included the following: a. Regular rules education, including a written recruiting manual containing a sample telephone call log sheet. b. The documentation of the telephone contacts with prospects, which was done on a form different than that supplied to coaches by the institution, was maintained only in the men's basketball office. c. Infrequent spot checks by compliance personnel and institutional auditors to determine whether the coaches were in compliance with NCAA legislation. (1) From June 2000 to spring 2003, institutional auditors and the compliance staff conducted infrequent spot checks of the telephone call logs prepared by the men's basketball staff to determine whether the logs were being maintained and whether the coaches recorded more than one call per week to prospective student-athletes. (2) From spring 2003 to September 2004, the compliance staff conducted infrequent spot checks of telephone numbers that appeared on the men's basketball staff's cellular telephone billing records to determine whether more than one call per week was made to a number that appeared on the cellular bill. 2. The institutional systems in place to track and monitor the telephone contacts made by members of the men's basketball coaching staff with prospective student-athletes were deficient in that the institution failed to do the following: a. Provide a standardized system to the men's basketball staff for the tracking or monitoring of telephone calls made to prospects.

4 b. Conduct spot checks comparing actual telephone billing records to the telephone logs sheets completed by the men's basketball coaching staff. Committee Rationale The enforcement staff took the position that the facts of this finding demonstrated a lack of institutional control. The institution asserted that the facts of this finding demonstrated a failure to monitor the telephone contacts with prospective student-athletes. The committee finds that the facts establish a failure to monitor by the institution. As shown by over 500 impermissible calls made over four years going undetected, the system in place to monitor phone calls made by the men's basketball coaching staff was wholly inadequate. The coaching staff got together on Sunday nights, reviewed the calls they had made and recorded a countable call on forms different than those supplied by the compliance office. The completed forms weren't turned in to the compliance office but were instead stored in a filing cabinet in the basketball office. However, review of the records by compliance personnel was sporadic at best, occurring approximately once per year. It wasn't possible to say with certainty when the reviews took place, as no records were maintained by the institution. Compounding the problem was that the reviews were conducted by interns rather than by trained and experienced compliance personnel. But perhaps the most glaring deficiency was that the logs produced by the basketball staff (which were incomplete since the coaches failed to record all calls made) were never cross-checked against institutional phone records; the coaches were taken at their word when even a cursory review of men's basketball office, cell phone and calling card bills would have revealed the myriad of impermissible calls being made by multiple coaches over a period of years. From 2009 University of Richmond Case, Pages 8 and 9 In reference to the Finding B-6-a, the former compliance director acknowledged that he neither reviewed coaches recruiting phone logs on a monthly basis nor cross checked the coaches phone logs with their cell phone and office records unless something looked suspicious. The former compliance director explained that there had been occasions when he noticed two calls had been placed to a junior prospect during a one-month period, at which time he reviewed phone records to verify that a violation had occurred. The former compliance director stated that he relied on the coaches to be honest and forthcoming, and that he did not randomly spot check phone records unless he had a reason to. Because of the institution s failure to adequately monitor its coaches recruiting telephone calls and text messaging, it did not detect that, for example, the men s basketball staff made as many as 83 impermissible calls to one prospect and his parents. The institution s failure to regularly cross check

5 phone logs with cell and office records, as well as to conduct random spot checks, contributed to the fact that the violations were not discovered by the institution. From 2010 University of Texas Pan American Case, Page 5: Although some were not located during the investigation, a review of the telephone logs submitted by the men's basketball coaching staff to the institution's athletics compliance office revealed that they did not include the majority of the 44 impermissible calls that were discussed in Finding B-1 of this report. Further, even though the logs were collected by the compliance staff, they were not compared for accuracy with institutional phone bills, resulting in the compliance office failing to detect the impermissible calls. The coaches in their interviews stated that they sometimes used their cell phones to make recruiting calls. However, because the coaches used their own cell phones and were not provided institutionallyowed cell phones, the compliance office did not collect and review the cell phone records of the coaches. Without the compliance office reviewing the records from the office or cell phones, there was no way to verify the accuracy of the coaches' logs or detect the impermissible calls. From 2010 University of Tennessee Chatanooga Case, Page 15 During the cooperative investigation in this case, the enforcement staff identified weaknesses within the institution's telephone contact monitoring system. The institution agreed that the system was inadequate. The first weakness identified was that while the system required that coaching staff members submit monthly telephone contact logs, the compliance staff did not always follow through to ensure that logs were submitted. As a result, multiple logs from various sport programs were not on file in the compliance office. Therefore, the established compliance system was not used properly and could not have deterred or detected violations. A second weakness within the system, prior to the implementation of the audits in October 2008, was that those telephone contact logs that were submitted to the compliance staff were not compared to available telephone bills to ensure proper recording of telephone contacts. Therefore, the established compliance system could not have detected violations unless self-reported by the recording coach. A third weakness identified in this system was that the athletics department did not have access to all coaches' cell phone bills. Specifically, the athletics department issued and paid for a total of 14 cell phones to be used among its 13 sport programs, resulting in multiple coaching staff members being responsible for paying for their personal cell phones that were also used for recruiting purposes. The athletics department retained cell phone bills for those institutionally funded cell phones but did not request cell phone bills from coaching staff members who paid for their personal cell phones also used for recruiting purposes. Therefore, the established compliance system could not have detected any impermissible activity by those coaches who used personal cell phones.

6 The institution has acknowledged that this inadequate compliance system partly resulted in some of the violations in this case. As a result, the institution has established the corrective measures as described later in this report. Revision History: Date Author Brief Summary of Revisions 0 Committee Initial Standard NAAC s Reasonable Standards are intended to establish an expectation to which all institutions will adhere when monitoring an institution s compliance with NCAA rules, providing education regarding NCAA rules and documenting compliance with NCAA rules. Every institution has different needs and must assess those needs. Such assessment may require institutions to implement monitoring, education, policies or procedures that exceed what is prescribed in this Reasonable Standard. The NCAA Enforcement Staff will give consideration to these standards in reviewing whether institutions have implemented adequate education, systems and monitoring.