Cal Athletics inexplicably self-reports minor NCAA violations, earns one year probation for football

I do not understand why Cal Athletics reported this.

Credit: Rob Hwang

(Note: The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Write for California staff)

At this point, the NCAA is a dinosaur with regard to enforcing the wild west of college athletics. Unless you do something truly egregious, like pull a Connor Stallions, it is very difficult to get hit with NCAA violations. You’d have to be maliciously compliant and cooperate with the governing body of college athletics. Thus, most programs simply sit on their hands for minor infractions, avoiding bad headlines and unnecessary conflicts.

Never underestimate the Cal Athletic Department, I guess.

Cal football was hit with a series of Level II violations after the compliance department did their own self-reporting. (I want to preface that Level II violations are minor for an athletic program, even if the headlines are themselves embarrassing. Cal is still eligible for a bowl, and the ACC title, in 2025).

Here is the set of violations via Cal Athletics.

The NCAA determined that the football program arranged for representatives of the institution's athletics interests to impermissibly recruit multiple prospective student-athletes and their family members. Specifically:

• In March 2022, despite direction from the athletic compliance staff, football staff members arranged for a Zoom panel during which three representatives of athletics interests promoted the football program to over 40 prospective student-athletes and their family members.

• A representative of athletics interests had impermissible in-person contact with four prospective student-athletes and their family members.

• A football staff member requested an individual to impermissibly contact prospective student-athletes and obtain information about a prospective student-athlete from the prospect's father, prior to the individual being employed by Cal. The individual made calls and/or text messages to five prospects and/or their parents.

A football staff member also violated the NCAA principles of ethical conduct and failed to cooperate with the NCAA enforcement staff by failing to provide full, complete or timely information during the investigation, and knowingly providing false and misleading information to the enforcement staff.

Yes, I get it. Andy Smith, do things the right way, etc.

But there are good rules, and then there are archaic artifacts.

Cal’s primary NCAA violation was taking one Zoom call with prospective recruits. This was at the tail end of the COVID era, where the majority of recruiting business was still handled virtually. This was not just a practice at Cal, this was an “everywhere in college athletics” practice.

Thus, Cal was self-reporting an old violation of NCAA pre-COVID bylaws that was likely being violated in a hundred other college athletic programs. Most programs will generally assess risk with these situations and decide that it’s not worth reporting something so minor, since the blowback from the NCAA will generally be disproportionate. This is not a lack of institutional control situation. These are one-offs.

For some bizarre reason, Cal compliance decided to report this violation, leading to several years of NCAA investigating Cal Athletics, and punishment for all parties involved.

Here is the punishment, which went into effect early last week:

• One year probation (May 2, 2025 - May 1, 2026)

• A $25,000 fine.

• Recruiting restrictions for the football program, including restrictions on recruiting communications for three weeks during the 2024-25 academic year, a reduction of seven recruiting-person days during the 2024-25 academic year, a prohibition on unofficial visits from March 31 to April 14, 2025, and a prohibition on official visits for a two-week period during Fall 2025. Some involved staff members were prohibited from off-campus recruiting and/or communicating with prospects for periods ranging from two to three weeks.

• Suspensions for the involved staff members, including one-game suspensions for two staff members, a two-week suspension for one staff member, and a two-year Show Cause order and disassociation for the staff member who violated the NCAA principles of ethical conduct.

Write for California has learned that the suspensions for Cal football staff members have already been served, and the Show Cause is currently ongoing.

Meanwhile, there have been multiple reports of bluebloods openly tampering with Cal football players before the start of the transfer portal, who then nearly immediately end up at these programs. There are countless ongoing conversations between agents and football staffers about a star player’s NIL worth that require a relentless influx of donor spend. We have a new system that is meant to circumvent the process of directly employing collegiate athletes, while athletic directors and high-level university administrators pocket seven-figure checks off of this system.

What Cal is now being publicly punished for is next to nothing. It is a self-inflicted wound.

So here is what the Cal athletic department has managed to accomplish with this minor infraction:

• A few weeks of bad headlines.

• Years of internal investigation that have resulted in endless bureaucratic waste for the football program and the university.

• Caused unnecessary friction with the recruiting staff, who have kept the program afloat with their work in the transfer portal.

• Damaged recruiting efforts during a critical time in the program.

This is all at a time when athletic director Jim Knowlton and associate athletic director Jenny Simon O’Neill are still being investigated internally (and sued externally) for their role in the Teri McKeever misconduct scandal. Priorities seem misaligned at Cal Athletics in this particular instance.

Here’s hoping that Ron Rivera can continue his efforts to modernize the program. Because own goal stories like the ones above are not the way.