The NCAA reversed itself Friday and threw out three violations and part of a fourth that occurred under former Ohio State basketball coach Jim O'Brien because the association's enforcement staff missed a deadline for filing charges.
...O'Brien was fired June 8, 2004, six weeks after he revealed to then-athletic director Andy Geiger that he had lent $6,000 to recruit Aleksandar Radojevic in 1999.
A subsequent investigation by Ohio State determined seven NCAA violations had occurred in the program while O'Brien was coach.
But the NCAA appeals committee said Friday its enforcement staff missed the deadline for notifying Ohio State of the charges regarding Radojevic by two days in 2005.
A little background from the Chronicle ($$$) in an article dated 2/16/2006:
An Ohio judge ruled on Wednesday that Ohio State University had no cause to fire James J. O'Brien as its men's basketball coach in 2004, even though Mr. O'Brien acknowledged having lent $6,000 to the mother of a talented young player who had visited the campus. The university could be on the hook for almost $10-million in damages.
At issue in the lawsuit is whether the loan was a "material breach" of Mr. O'Brien's employment contract. The university argued it was because such loans -- regarded as inducements to recruits -- are prohibited by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and NCAA violations are grounds for dismissal.
Mr. O'Brien said that the loan, which he made in 1998 and revealed to university officials in 2004, was a favor to someone in need,and that the basketball player could not be considered a potential recruit anyway because he had played as a professional in his native Yugoslavia.
For its part, the NCAA has yet to say whether the loan constituted a violation of its rules.
In his decision on Wednesday, Judge Joseph T. Clark of the Ohio Court of Claims agreed with Mr. O'Brien. Judge Clark ruled that "this single isolated failure of performance" -- the loan -- was "not so egregious" as to constitute a "material breach" invalidating the contract. In fact, Ohio State's haste to fire Mr. O'Brien, without even trying to work out some kind of compromise, was a much more flagrant violation of the contract, the judge ruled.
I'm confused. Does this mean that a coach can make a loan to a recruit as long as the loan isn't too big and stays within the terms of his particular contract?