Big 12, ACC siding with NCAA after Big Ten’s demand to pause tampering cases

The NCAA plans to continue its anti-tampering measures, officials told Yahoo Sports, despite a request from the Big Ten to suspend such investigations.

Big 12 and ACC executives told Yahoo Sports on Thursday that they oppose suspending any tampering cases. An SEC official declined to comment on the matter at this time, but the league’s own commissioner, Greg Sankey, urged the NCAA to pursue tampering violations in an interview with Yahoo Sports just two months ago.

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In a letter to the NCAA this week, the Big Ten urged the association to suspend tampering-related cases while the NCAA works to reform and modernize its policies. Such a decision – suspending active investigations – requires a vote of the Division I Board of Directors and is not an NCAA staff decision.

An NCAA task force – the Offense Modernization Task Force – is already in the process of completely reforming tampering and other policies. The process should not result in a pause in enforcement, conference leaders say.

Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark says he is “categorically opposed” to suspending tampering, but is open to discussion about rule reform. In a statement to Yahoo Sports, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said he “disagrees” with the suspension of tampering investigations while the NCAA rules are reviewed and called rule enforcement “critically important” in the current environment.

Under the direction of the Division I Board of Governors – an executive group made up of school administrators – the NCAA has refocused its efforts on prosecuting tampering violators over the past two months. The association has in fact recently opened several investigations, even distributing a note to schools announcing the pursuit of “significant sanctions” for offenders.

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These sanctions can include coaching match suspensions, scholarship reductions and vacation of victories for using a tampering player.

Most notably, the NCAA opened a tampering investigation into Ole Miss, which was the center of an explosive press conference in which Clemson coach Dabo Swinney accused Rebels coach Pete Golding of directly tampering with one of his players. However, Ole Miss officials have evidence that several coaches at other schools tampered with their own players. These allegations could lead to a wave of cases and a flood of sanctions, as staffers implicate other staffers for tampering – a policy that is routinely violated.

In January, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey and other league administrators sent comments to Yahoo Sports criticizing the NCAA for its lack of tampering and urging the association to pursue violators.

At meetings in Nashville this week, SEC chairs discussed tampering at length, with many opposed to suspending the records altogether.

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Tampering, prevalent throughout sports, is NCAA Regulation 13.1.1.4 — the act of a school staff member communicating with a player from another school about a transfer before that player enters the NCAA transfer portal.

However, as House settlement negotiations intensified in the fall of 2024, the Division I Board of Governors directed NCAA staff to primarily pause enforcement of the tampering while the focus shifted to finalizing and then implementing, arguably, the most significant change in the history of college athletics – the settlement-related athlete compensation model that currently exists.

In January, the DI board ordered the association to restart its crackdown on forgery, perhaps as aggressively as ever. In a statement to Yahoo Sports in January, the NCAA said its enforcement team had handled approximately 95 tampering cases so far this year, some of which remained before the Committee on Infractions for final approval.

That said, tampering is not an easily prosecuted violation. There are many obstacles, the most important of which is having enough evidence – from the offending party – to prove that tampering has in fact taken place. Gathering concrete evidence of tampering is difficult because coaches and school administrators often avoid reporting other staff members.

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“Successfully enforcing tampering cases requires the cooperation of coaches, student-athletes and administrators – especially those whose teams were tampered with – and while the Association is grateful for the support of resolved cases, greater cooperation will lead to more closed cases,” Tim Buckley, NCAA senior vice president of external affairs, said in a statement released in January.

Swinney’s public allegations of tampering against Ole Miss and Golding last month opened the door to more such allegations privately reaching investigators at NCAA headquarters.

A university official said, “I think everyone realizes that everyone is speeding ahead. When someone breaks that seal like Dabo, that’s good. It increases the pressure on the NCAA.”

A vicious circle can materialize in which rival staffs — under investigation — denounce other staffs, etc.

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“How is the NCAA going to decide all this? » asked a college sports player involved in one of the investigations.

Asked about it last month, NCAA President Charlie Baker gestured toward the new Offense Modernization Task Force.

“This kind of example is exactly the kind of thing we have accused them of,” he said. “Here are five or six things that are different and we can’t do the same thing. We have to find a different way to do it.”

The task force – a mix of school administrators and NCAA staff – is studying all aspects of tampering, from penalty structure to actual statutes, with the goal of modernizing the rules in today’s college sports environment.

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“It’s a different world,” Baker said. “They’re looking at all of this in depth.”

The NCAA president specifically pointed the finger at third parties – agents – who sometimes have no real relationship with the school and yet communicate with school coaches about players (sometimes even without the players’ knowledge), all in an effort to drive up prices.

The NCAA does not have jurisdiction to penalize agents and their role in tampering, but the association can punish schools.

Is it up to schools to control their players’ own agents?

The NCAA statutes give us an overview of the penalties for tampering. Unauthorized contact (the word the NCAA uses for tampering) can actually be a Level I offense – the most serious of them. Sanctions include recruiting restrictions, coaching suspensions, fines, probation and winning suspensions based on the participation of the player who was tampered with.

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“As we continue to advance critical areas of modernizing college athletics, it is imperative that we remain focused on enforcing and developing necessary rules and sanctions by working with the NCAA,” said Phillips, the ACC commissioner. “We are in an environment like no other, and we are constantly told by our coaches and administrators that tampering must be a priority. The ACC is dedicated to a thorough review of the current contact rules, but in light of the most recent transfer portal and the very public examples of clear tampering and blatant interference with contractual commitments, I do not agree that all tampering investigations should be suspended.”