LAWRENCE, Kan. - Citing academic fraud by a former graduate assistant football coach and a woeful compliance record under former athletic director Al Bohl, the NCAA extended Kansas' self-imposed probation through October 2009.
Kansas had placed itself on two years probation following an investigation by the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions, but the committee extended that to three years Thursday and made more severe scholarship cuts than the school had hoped.
The committee cut three football scholarships and one in men's basketball for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 school years. The school cut one scholarship last year in football and none in men's basketball, although it did cut women's basketball scholarships by two for the 2005-06 school year.
Chancellor Robert Hemenway said the school would not appeal, and noted that Kansas had self-reported its violations.
"The committee has been fair with us and just with us. We trust the process and we accept the committee's judgment," Hemenway said at a news conference. "This is a process that proves the integrity of college athletics, and it is a process that deserves our respect."
Among the committee's most serious findings was that the former graduate assistant provided test answers to two prospective junior college transfers who were taking a correspondence course exam in his dorm room. Committee member Gene Marsh said in a conference call with reporters that the investigation found the academic fraud happened without head coach Mark Mangino's knowledge.
Athletic director Lew Perkins said the committee's findings would not affect the contract extension Mangino signed in August, a deal that will pay him a base salary of $200,000 with total compensation around $1.5 million.
"I don't need to cheat," Mangino said. "That's not how I operate. I have enough faith in my coaching ability."
The committee also found that a basketball booster, with whom the university has since severed ties, provided improper benefits to two players, one of whom was a recruit when the relationship began.
One of the players, forward Darnell Jackson, served a nine-game suspension last year for receiving the improper benefits from Don Davis, who lives in Jackson's hometown of Oklahoma City.
The report also said a former athletic director understaffed the university's compliance office and told the school's compliance director, who at the time was juggling that duty with those of the senior women's administrator, "Compliance doesn't sell tickets."
The report does not mention Bohl by name, but the remark and the lack of adequate compliance staffing took place while he was in the position.
"The failure of the institution to adequately staff its compliance office, the failure of the compliance officer to adequately perform her duties and the complete breakdown of communication within the department of athletics demonstrated a lack of institutional control," the committee's report read in part.
However, Marsh praised Perkins for beefing up compliance and taking steps to report violations, including his discovery that cash payments to senior basketball players who had used up their eligibility was not allowable under NCAA rules.
"He should be recognized for his good and effective work since he came on in the summer of 2003," Marsh, a professor at the University of Alabama, told reporters. "As soon as he took the job, he pulled in outside help to identify the problem, to get at the violations and to deal with them."
Rick Evrard, an outside attorney for the university, said Kansas was not trying to sacrifice its women's program for the sake of its marquee men's team. Instead, he said, the school made the cuts when it believed there were violations in the women's program and did not know about a booster's improper involvement with the men's team.
"As we were handing the NCAA information about our women's team, they were handing us information about our men's team," Evrard said.
The announcement came eight weeks after a delegation that included Mangino, basketball coach Bill Self, Hemenway and Perkins met with the committee at a Baltimore hotel and answered 11 charges of wrongdoing — five in football, three in men's basketball, one in women's basketball, one encompassing 26 secondary violations and one charge of lack of institution control.
The violations surfaced in July 2005, two years after Perkins succeeded Bohl as athletic director.
Based on its own investigation, the school admitted, among other things, to giving prospective football players academic advice and assistance, allowing them to use athletic department facilities to complete correspondence work and permitting them to share answers when completing online courses.
The school also said that under former men's basketball coach Roy Williams, "three representatives of the University's athletic interests" provided cash and clothing to graduating players who had exhausted their eligibility, while members of the women's basketball staff arranged for housing, transportation and the use of facilities for potential student-athletes.
