The long-awaited infractions report involving Kansas men’s basketball is expected to be delivered Wednesday, sources tell Sports Illustrated.
The ruling, which comes from a hearing panel appointed by the NCAA as part of its Independent Accountability Resolution Process (IARP), will close multiple chapters in a long-running saga. It is the final infractions case stemming from the 2017 federal investigation of corruption in college basketball, which resulted in major investigations of no fewer than eight programs. It also is the final act by the IARP itself, which was created in response to that corruption scandal but is now being shuttered after heavy criticism for its cost and inefficiency.
The Kansas case is arguably the most high-profile of all investigations that came out of that FBI probe. The school was charged with five Level I violations, the most severe breaches of NCAA bylaws, including a lack of institutional control charge, and an allegation that Bill Self failed his head-coach responsibility requirements for compliance within his program.
Among the violations were payments from Adidas bag man Thomas “T.J.” Gassnola and executive Jim Gatto to people associated with former Jayhawks Billy Preston and Silvio De Sousa. Gatto and Gassnola allegedly funneled money to Preston and his mother Nicole Player. Self, Townsend and other representatives of the school alleged committed violations in recruiting De Sousa. Self and Townsend also were allegedly aware that Adidas representatives made impermissible contacts or offered impermissible inducements to three recruits. The school has fought the assertion that Adidas was a representative of its interests.
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The school has acknowledged some wrongdoing without getting into specifics. After Kansas initially rebuked the allegations and even awarded Self a so-called “lifetime contract,” it changed course last November and suspended both Self and Townsend for the first four games of the 2022–23 season. The two also were given recruiting restrictions by the school. Whether they will face additional sanctions should be learned Wednesday.
Kansas is one of the few schools involved in the FBI-related cases that did not fire any of its involved coaches. Louisville, Arizona and LSU all dismissed their head coaches.
In ruling on FBI-related infractions cases involving Arizona, LSU, Louisville and North Carolina State, the IARP set a precedent of not applying sanctions that banned any of those programs from postseason play. The only school that was caught up in the federal investigation and received a postseason ban was Oklahoma State in 2021, for seemingly lesser violations that some of the other schools had committed.
In Kansas’s case, postseason eligibility is of fundamental importance to the upcoming season—as is Self’s availability to coach. The Jayhawks could start the year ranked No. 1 and are widely expected to be a national championship contender. Kansas won the 2022 NCAA tournament while in the midst of this investigation.
Beyond penalties to Self and Townsend, other potential sanctions facing the school are financial penalties, further recruiting restrictions and vacation of victories.
The IARP concept was born in 2018 as part of the recommendations by a panel convened by then–NCAA president Mark Emmert to address the corruption probe into men’s basketball. The panel, led by Condoleezza Rice, recommended an “off-ramp” from the NCAA’s customary peer-review process of investigation and adjudicating infractions issues for especially complicated and contentious cases. The belief at the time was that this would free the NCAA from insinuations of bias.
However, the IARP was beset with problems from the beginning. Investigators were not familiar with NCAA rules or investigative protocol, which led to a long and steep learning curve. Many of the investigators from the IARP’s Complex Case Unit conducted their own interviews of involved coaches, administrators and players, duplicating effort and further elongating the process. And the cost in billable hours skyrocketed as cases dragged along.
Case in point: The Kansas infractions hearing in front of the Independent Resolution Panel was held in mid-April. Nearly six months later, there finally will be a ruling.
Ultimately, the decision to turn over some of the most high-profile, contentious and complicated infractions cases in NCAA history to a group with no experience in that realm proved to be a failure. In August 2022, the NCAA announced that it was sending no more cases to the IARP and that the program would be shuttered when its final case was concluded. This is that case.
