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Deion Sanders’ Jackson State program put on probation by NCAA after multiple violations

Spenser Davis

By Spenser Davis

Published:

Deion Sanders’ job at Jackson State just got more difficult.

The NCAA announced Friday morning that Jackson State violated multiple NCAA rules. As a result, they’ll be put on probation and have some recruiting restrictions put in place.

Of course, these violations all took place before Sanders was hired earlier this year. Still, it will present an interesting challenge for him to deal with right off the bat at his new job.

The biggest violation? Jackson State allowed 34 student-athletes to compete before receiving final certification from the NCAA. On the recruiting side, the NCAA says a former football ops member provided $300 to the godmother of a football prospect.

Here’s an excerpt from the report:

“The university and the NCAA enforcement staff agreed that 34 student-athletes practiced and competed before receiving final certification from the NCAA Eligibility Center. Because systems in place at the time did not detect or prevent the violations, the university agreed that it failed to monitor its certification process.

According to the agreement, a former football internal operations staff member violated recruiting rules when she impermissibly provided $300 to the godmother of a football prospect. The former staff member also impermissibly arranged for tutoring to assist the prospect in completing courses needed to be eligible after transferring.”

The committee on infractions approved the following penalties:

  • Two years of probation.
  • A fine of $5,000.
  • A 2% reduction in baseball scholarship equivalencies from the annual limit of 11.7 equivalencies during the 2021-22 academic year and a 2.5% reduction in football scholarship equivalencies from the annual limit of 63 equivalencies during the 2021-22 and 2022-23 academic years.
  • The football program must serve a one-week ban on unofficial visits in each of January, February, March and April 2021.
  • A reduction of four football official paid visits during the 2021-22 academic year.
  • The football program must serve a one-week ban of all recruiting communication contacts and off-campus recruiting by the entire football staff with any prospects, including transfers, in each of May and June 2021.
  • A vacation of records of contests in which student-athletes participated while ineligible. The university must provide a written report containing the contests impacted to the NCAA media coordination and statistics staff within 14 days of the public release of the decision.

 

Spenser Davis

Spenser is the news manager at Saturday Road and covers college football across all Saturday Football brands.