Summer Reading: What’s An NCAA Violation, Anyway?

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A thoughtful article from the past week on the matter of NCAA violations (and the larger realm of compliance departments at NCAA member schools) comes from Kevin Trahan of SB Nation, who covers labor and legal issues in college sports in addition to Northwestern athletics for the site he co-founded, Inside NU.

Trahan writes about “pastagate” at Oklahoma, “impermissible icing” in South Carolina, and other violations that actually aren’t violations… sometimes not at all, and on other occasions, not in the way the general public initially perceives them to be.

Trahan’s analysis reinforces the fact that confusion reigns in the world of compliance. “Pastagate,” after all, did seem to focus at least some attention on the need for schools to liberalize the ways in which they could provide food for their students. That it wasn’t really a violation might come as news to many people… which is part of what Trahan explores in his piece, which can be found here.

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