The NCAA’s Division I Committee on Infractions found Friday that Oklahoma State did not adhere to its own drug testing policy and allowed the impermissible participating of a student group in hosting recruiting prospects.
The investigation came as the result of a series of Sports Illustrated articles highlighting alleged violations in the school’s athletic department. The committee found that many of the allegations in the SI reports were “unfounded” and did not find that university officials failed to monitor the program.
As a result of violations that were found, the NCAA handed the Cowboys a one-year probation and $8,500 in fines, as well as requiring the suspension of the Orange Pride student program for four years and adopting university-imposed recruiting restrictions.
The self-imposed penalties:
- A limit of 30 official visits per year during the 2015-16 and 2015-16 years.
- A reduction of coaches participating in off-campus evaluations by one (from 10 to nine in the fall and nine to eight in the spring) during the 2015-16 and 2015-16 years.
- A reduction in the number of evaluation days by 10 days in the fall and spring during the 2015-16 and 2015-16 years.
The committee reviewed more than 50,000 emails and other documents and conducted nearly 90 interviews of current and former student-athletes, coaches, staff and boosters in its investigation.
Although the SI articles included alleged violations under Les Miles’ watch as Oklahoma State football coach, the NCAA committee’s findings concerning drug testing focused on a period from 2008 to 2012, during Mike Gundy’s tenure, stating that the university “did not follow its own written policies and procedures for students who tested positive for banned substances” during that time frame.
“The athletics director believed he had latitude in the application of the policy and deferred to the head football coach’s recommendation on whether to suspend student-athletes who failed a drug test. As a result, five football student-athletes competed in a total of seven games when they should have been withheld from competition,” the committee noted in an NCAA release.
Xavier Athletic Director Greg Christopher, a member of the Committee on Infractions, said this wasn’t considered a failure to monitor because the monitoring structure was in place, “but it was ineffective.”
“They had structure in place at the institution and they had management in place, but there were mistakes made. So it’s not something where we felt there was a failure to monitor, per se,” Christopher said. “We thought this was rather narrow and limited in the sense that it was a fairly limited period of time, a relatively small number of athletes and a limited competitive advantage.
“It’s not the NCAA’s place obviously to have a set drug policy across all 351 member institutions, but we do expect schools to follow the policies that they come up with.”
The committee also found that the Oklahoma State’s all-female Orange Pride program “engaged in impermissible hosting activities during football prospects’ official and unofficial visits,” from 2009-13.
