Former Tennessee and Southern Miss basketball coach Donnie Tyndall has been slapped with a 10-year show-cause penalty for his role in NCAA violations at Southern Miss. The news was first reported by CBS Sports’ Gary Parrish.
The NCAA has hit Donnie Tyndall with a 10-year show-cause penalty for his role in the Southern Miss case, a source told @CBSSports.
— Gary Parrish (@GaryParrishCBS) April 8, 2016
The NCAA found that Tyndall committed multiple Level I violations, including scheduling assistant coaches and grad assistants to complete online coursework for seven recruits over two years, giving impermissible financial aid, and obstructing the NCAA’s investigation of the matter.
For Tyndall, the 10-year show-cause penalty comes with a half-season suspension if he’s hired again at the NCAA level.
Below are some more details of the fraud that the NCAA unearthed:
NCAA confirmed academic fraud for one Southern Miss player through “computer metadata” and handwriting analysts
— Dan Wolken (@DanWolken) April 8, 2016
In one instance, a Southern Miss GA authored 6 English assignments for a JuCo recruit who needed transferrable credits to Division I.
— Jon Solomon (@JonSolomon35) April 8, 2016
Basically, the NCAA says Southern Miss was physically sending GAs all over the country to do coursework for their Juco players. Insane.
— Dan Wolken (@DanWolken) April 8, 2016
Southern Miss was penalized with three years’ probation, running through the 2019-20 season and has to vacate the wins in which ineligible athletes played. The school will also have five fewer scholarships available during the next three years, and must pay a $5,000 fine. Southern Miss self-imposed postseason bans for the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons. According to the NCAA, there will be no additional postseason bans for the men’s basketball program.
Tyndall was fired after one season at the helm in Knoxville where he went 16-16, and was fired after the violations he committed at Southern Miss came to the surface. Tennessee athletic director Tom Hart said last March that the school would have never hired Tyndall if he knew of the violations at the time.
The Comeback’s Michael Grant interviewed Tyndall for a piece last December when he was still in NCAA limbo. You can read that piece here.
