Former Air Force Academy assistant football coach Bill Sheridan was given a three-year show-cause penalty by the NCAA on Friday for impermissible recruiting during the COVID-19 dead period in 2020. The school was administered sanctions last September, but escaped major penalties due to its proactive handling of the case.
In January 2022, head coach Troy Calhoun fired five assistant coaches who were involved in the violations as the school verified its involvement in the impermissible recruiting visits to the Academy. Sheridan, who also was charged with unethical conduct for providing “false or misleading information during the investigation and encouraged prospects to do the same,” was the only coach who contested the allegations against him.
With the Committee on Infractions panel having ruled against Sheridan, he faces a three-year period in which “any NCAA member school employing him must restrict him
from all athletically related activities unless it shows cause why the restrictions
should not apply.” He coached the defensive line at Air Force during the 2020 and ’21 seasons.
The institutional list of sanctions announced in September: two years probation and an obligatory fine; a reduction of 46 total official visits for the football program during the 2022–23 and ’23–24 academic years; no unofficial visits for football from Sept. 1 through Oct. 12 of this year; no recruiting communications for football for four weeks during this academic year; a reduction in evaluation days for football by 10 last spring and by 34 this fall; a reduction of the football squad size by 10 for four years, starting this season; and show-cause penalties for the coaches who have agreed to their violations and penalties.
“The coaches were employed by the Academy, so we bear responsibility there,” says Air Force athletic director Nathan Pine. “But as an academy we have to do the right thing. Once we knew the wrongdoing, we were going to take care of it ourselves. We were going to cooperate fully, we were going to learn from our mistakes, and we were going to go forward.”
The infractions case moved quickly thereafter, resulting in a rare “bifurcated ruling,” which the NCAA hopes to implement more often in the future as a means of expediting the completion of cases.
There was a negotiated resolution and sanctions for the school and four coaches, while also allowing for the case to proceed to a Committee on Infractions hearing for Sheridan. That gave closure to most involved parties, instead of keeping everyone waiting as the contested part of the case played out.
“I hope it’s an example now and a pathway forward,” Pine says of the bifurcated ruling that allowed Air Force to move ahead. “As far as the Academy is concerned, about 80 percent of our penalties have been served. This is a good example of the process working the way it’s supposed to.”
Although the bifurcated case alternative has previously been in the NCAA bylaws, it has rarely been used. The Air Force case provided something of a test case for implementing it more prominently among the methods for expediting a resolution.
Air Force had 24 prospects on campus in a coordinated effort to circumvent the NCAA’s recruiting dead period during the pandemic. According to the Committee on Infractions report, the football staff devised a plan to use so-called “windshield tours” of campus during the pandemic to circumvent NCAA rules.
According to the infractions report, the 2020 windshield tours “allowed admitted prospective students to register online and participate in a self-guided driving tour of campus (with the requirement that they remain in their vehicles at all times). Despite the advice from compliance, football coaches began a practice of using the prep school coaches on the ‘windshield tours.’ Joining in this practice, the former assistant coach instructed four prospects to sign up for windshield tours and provided contact information for the prep school coach, who was asked to arrange a tour with the prospects. During those tours, prospects accessed the football stadium, locker rooms, athletics department weight room and indoor athletics facility.”
Sheridan, the NCAA says, also tried to keep these tours hidden.
“The assistant coach did not notify the football head coach or the compliance office about these arrangements,” the report says. “After the prospects’ visits, the assistant coach instructed some of them to not post about their visit on social media and, if asked by the school, only state that they had participated in a windshield tour. When asked about two prospects who were seen in the football stadium, the assistant coach denied having knowledge of and involvement in the arrangement with the prep coach. After the assistant coach was questioned by compliance staff, he contacted another prospect and instructed him to tell Air Force and NCAA enforcement staff that he had only taken a windshield tour.”
Sheridan was briefly employed as linebackers coach at Wisconsin under Paul Chryst last year, but resigned when his name was linked to the Air Force investigation.
There have been several infractions cases pertaining to recruiting violations during that time, but Air Force is the first one to result in a Level I charge—the most significant in the NCAA’s violation hierarchy.
Michigan and coach Jim Harbaugh have received a draft of a Notice of Allegations related to an impermissible recruiting contact during the same dead period. That reportedly has been classified as a Level II, but Harbaugh could face a Level I charge for providing false or misleading information. That prospective charge could be disputed by the coach and the school, leading to a contested hearing.
