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NCAA and OSU on Sports Illustrated allegations: ‘fundamentally unfounded’

Good job, good effort, Sports Illustrated.

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Well, you did your best, SI. We laud your efforts and tip our hats to your investigative work. Unfortunately Oklahoma State and the NCAA refute your theories and ridiculous accusations (if we can even call them that). Also, can we bill you?

On Tuesday OSU and the NCAA released a joint statement noting that what Sports Illustrated claimed about the football program in Stillwater was “fundamentally unfounded.”

“After a thorough review by the NCAA Enforcement Staff and an outside consultant hired by Oklahoma State University, allegations of misconduct in the Oklahoma State football program as reported by the media in September 2013 were fundamentally unfounded.”

Cut to you, Thayer Evans…

Thanks for playing.

The statement went on to say that despite going through 50,000 emails and interviewing 82 people involved with the program the the Enforcement Staff and an outside consultant couldn’t really find any major violations.

However, the university wasn’t completely acquitted. Here’s more from the statement.

“Oklahoma State fully cooperated with the NCAA Enforcement Staff and participated in the interviews. As a result of the information collected during these joint interviews, the NCAA will issue a notice of allegations detailing three possible Level II violations.”

Here are the three realms in which OSU is being punished.

Level II violations do not include the deadly “lack of institutional control” allegations brought on by Level I violations. Here’s an overview of what they look like.

The penalties for Level II violations, while sometimes extreme, will likely be pretty minimal for Oklahoma State.

OSU brass seemed pretty pleased with the findings. “We are gratified the primary claims by Sports Illustrated have been discredited,” said Burns Hargis.

Mike Holder echoed the sentiment.

“I am pleased that the independent inquiry did not substantiate the primary contentions contained in the Sports Illustrated articles,” said Mike Holder to the Oklahoman.

Mike Gundy offered his thoughts to the Oklahoman as well.

“While I am pleased, but not surprised, that the claims in Sports Illustrated were fundamentally unfounded, we continue to work with the athletics administration to ensure a clear understanding and application of our policies,” said Gundy.

The entire thing felt all along like Sports Illustrated was propping up Oklahoma State as a third party mouthpiece for what we should be screaming at the NCAA which, as an OSU fan, was really unfortunate.

This from the third party report was particularly damning of Sports Illustrated.

Overall, several interviewees indicated that they reported to SI general information or incidents about college football but that the SI reporter indicated that the incident occurred at OSU.

I don’t think anyone is (or should be) surprised that only Level II violations were found. This was never going to end as badly as we thought when it first started. And now we wait for the NCAA to levy punishment on the football program.

NCAA report
Third party report

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