BATON ROUGE ? In a 53-page report to the
NCAA, LSU has admitted that its football program likely broke NCAA recruiting rules by housing former player Akiem Hicks in a reduced-rent apartment in Baton Rouge for three months last summer, improperly transporting him to LSU and making impermissible telephone calls to Hicks during the recruiting period.
The NCAA will review the report and will decide if it conducts its own investigation of LSU, which could lead to penalties.
LSU last fall began an investigation into the recruitment of Hicks, a defensive tackle out of Sacramento City Community College, by assistant coach D.J. McCarthy. Because LSU officials thought rules were broken, Hicks was never allowed to play a down for the Tigers last season. Had he played, LSU may have been subject to game forfeitures. LSU also did not allow McCarthy to do any recruiting last fall, and after the season, McCarthy was let go.
"As disappointed as I am in the violations that occurred, I have an equal amount of pride in our compliance office's quick actions, in our thorough investigation and in our reactions to the findings," LSU chancellor Michael Martin said in an LSU release on Tuesday. "I believe we have avoided potentially more severe sanctions because we self-detected these violations early and took immediate disciplinary measures."
When releasing McCarthy, who came to LSU from UCLA, LSU had general counsel Ray Lamonica also get McCarthy to sign a "resignation agreement" that guaranteed his cooperation with any possible NCAA investigation in the future or he would not continue to get paid the remainder of his contract, which ended last month.
"We stand ready to assist the NCAA with any further information they may need to complete this process," LSU athletic director Joe Alleva said in the release. "It is a very serious matter any time violations of NCAA rules are discovered, but I take comfort in the fact we have a compliance program in place that discovered these issues early and took swift action to minimize the severity of the situation."
LSU included in its report to the NCAA a detailed plan to improve its internal process for the enrollment and transfer of new student-athletes to LSU as well as enhance its education of the rules and monitoring of student workers. A student worker in the football office apparently paid for a meal for Hicks, which is against NCAA rules.
LSU also plans a "thorough review" of the rules regarding the maintenance of coaches' phone logs involving recruits.
"Because LSU so vigorously enforces its compliance program, it is obviously disappointed that its investigation of this matter uncovered violations of NCAA Bylaws," LSU concluded on the final pages of its report. "The discovery of these violations, however, occurred because the University compliance staff so promptly identified the potential for violations in this situation.
"The University has been as careful and thorough as possible in conducting this investigation and rendering this report. Still, it expects the NCAA may have further questions regarding this matter, and it stands ready to assist the NCAA investigative staff in its review of this report and with any further investigation or action that the staff deems appropriate."