Self-imposed penalties aren’t the end of KU’s battle with NCAA, but a telling next step
Endless years since the inception of an NCAA investigation of Kansas Athletics that in 2019 became an allegation of five Level 1 violations in men’s basketball, a verdict at last was issued on Wednesday.
Not by the NCAA, mind you.
The school announced it was suspending coach Bill Self and assistant Kurtis Townsend for the team’s first four regular-season games. It also self-imposed a variety of new recruiting restrictions.
Cynicism about the meaning of this gesture notwithstanding, it’s a shrewd move on many levels by KU. Again.
In contrast to a widespread initial perception that Kansas basketball was to be bulldozed and made an example of by the NCAA, KU continues to seize the narrative and assert itself within a vacuum of direction and leadership in the NCAA’s enforcement process.
That is, at least unless and until the NCAA’s Independent Accountability Resolution Process (IARP) demonstrates otherwise with a final ruling in this case — one that Kansas now seemingly seeks to spur with this distinctly proactive move.
Indeed, Kansas informing the NCAA’s Independent Resolution Panel of these measures might well be interpreted as a step toward further negotiated sanctions.
The measures also suggest that KU believes the ultimate reconciliation of its case will meet with less harsh punishment than what was at stake when it started. At least on the surface, Wednesday’s actions seem to speak to Kansas admitting only to reduced allegations, a long way removed from the ones that came with the initial threat of postseason bans.
Wherever KU’s case goes from here, though, it should be understood that this is in no way the same as a final say by the IARP. How the NCAA views the steps Kansas announced Wednesday presumably will be reflected in where its final judgment lands.
Whether it’s an attempt to just get the whole mess over with, or because KU has faith in what that eventual result will be, Kansas surely is taking this action to prime the pump toward resolution.
Or as athletic director Travis Goff said in a statement: “We are hopeful these difficult self-imposed sanctions will assist in bringing the case to a conclusion.”
Kansas hasn’t always been eager to get this investigation and penalty phase over with.
KU has fended off substantial punishment in one form or another all along since meeting the initial charges with defiance and a determination to fight: Self in a 2019 statement called the allegations “innuendo, half-truths, misimpressions and mischaracterizations.”
Meanwhile, even as KU’s recruiting has suffered to a degree in the years since the investigation began, Kansas obviously has prospered even with the anvil of punishment hovering overhead ever since.
Loom as penalties might, Self was given what was essentially a lifetime contract in 2021 and the Jayhawks won the national title earlier this year.
So whatever the school’s strategy has been, it’s worked. Including, to a point, that part of the effect of the delay has been to drain the clock against the emerging landscape of name, image and likeness benefits to student-athletes.
Over time, NIL has rendered the accusations against Kansas increasingly ancient, and perhaps even quaint. The initial allegations directed at KU through the FBI’s probe of Adidas, and the ensuing college basketball corruption trial certainly seemed more ominous at the outset.
No current players, and none on last season’s championship team, were implicated in the fallout of the NCAA case.
Several schools were caught up in the FBI’s investigation. A couple have seen their cases resolved with varying severity, in terms of repercussions. Others, like KU, are still waiting.
The case against KU revolves primarily around the allegations that former Adidas consultant T.J. Gassnola was acting as a booster of KU when he paid $90,000 to the mother of former KU player Billy Preston and $2,500 to the guardian of former KU player Silvio De Sousa.
KU has denied that Adidas should be considered a booster of the school, as well as any implication that the company was acting on KU’s behalf with such payments.
By now, those payments seem like chump change compared to the deals available to current players at KU and athletes elsewhere around the country through NIL. KU freshman Gradey Dick, for example, has multiple NIL deals projected through ON3 NIL Valuation’s algorithm to be worth $177,000 over the next 12 months.
So KU to this point has been bedeviling the NCAA at its own game. And even if you dislike the approach, from unyielding at the start to giving some ground now, it’s hard to argue against the results.
Especially when you see what happened to Oklahoma State, which was banned from the 2022 NCAA Tournament after self-reporting violations related to the FBI probe.
Or to Mizzou, for that matter, which fully cooperated with the NCAA in a matter rooted in one rogue tutor and in 2019 was smacked with postseason bans in football, baseball and softball, among other sanctions.
While every case is different, the inconsistencies of the NCAA are so confounding as to appear capricious and, thus, not credible.
That’s a big reason why we’re all left to wonder about its future.
But one message appears clear from NCAA enforcement:
It’s in a school’s best interests to concede nothing at the start of the process and gradually work to negotiate from there. Even if we still don’t know where this case will end, KU has bought valuable time by dictating the tempo, just like it does in so many games on the court.