There may soon be stricter penalties and infractions for those found violating NCAA rules.
On Tuesday, the NCAA Division I Council voted to “introduce a package of proposals for penalties focused on personal accountability in the infractions process,” per On3.
Some of the proposed changes include: Publicly naming individuals involved in wrongdoing and creating a public database of coaches with a history of Level I/II violations, expanding coaching suspensions to include days between contests, expanding disassociation penalties for boosters engaged in rules violations, and attaching penalties for schools that employ individuals during a show-cause order.
The suspensions including days between contests section stand out, as coaches who are suspended are currently allowed to be around their teams all week and only suspended on game days, such as recently-suspended Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh. The new rule would make it so coaches cannot be around their team for the entirety of the suspension period.
While it’s understandable that the NCAA would want to make the penalties harsher, there’s also a bit of a hypocritical element to the whole thing, as the organization regularly shows that it doesn’t care about players via denying waivers for arbitrary reasons, among other things.
It is unclear when the harsher penalties would begin to take place, but it could be as early as January 2024.
[On3]
