LSU Charged With Recruiting Violations Because a Commit Changed His Mind

Les Miles is probably not in a good mood. His program was hit with a recruiting violation, but it wasn't his fault nor the fault of anyone on his staff. It's because the NCAA knows there is a hole in the rules, but rather than do something about it the NCAA just warns teams of the possibility of a violation should a certain scenario develop.

Sure enough, that scenario developed for Miles and the Tigers.

via @kevol80/Twitter

A recruit was going to do like many high school athletes do and graduate early so he could enroll at LSU in January. Why do this? It's so a player can participate in spring practice making the likelihood of playing in the fall as a freshman higher. It happens all the time so the scenario was nothing unusual. It also did not bind the player to the school like a letter of intent does so should they decided to go elsewhere they can.

Here is where the violation comes in.

When players are still in the recruiting process universities are only allowed to have a limited amount of contact with them. After they fill out financial aid agreements and sign them the rules are relaxed and schools are allowed to have unlimited contact with them. However, should the players decide to decommit that unlimited contact suddenly becomes a violation.

The recruit in question has not been named which is probably good. It would not be shocking for fans to voice their displeasure with him online because the school has been sanctioned because he changed his mind. For the next two years the Tigers can still sign players early, but they can't give them financial aid packages (which will kind of make signing early kind of hard for most kids).

LSU is also going to lose 10 percent of its recruiting evaluation days in 2015.

This is ridiculous. For the NCAA to punish a school when it knows a team is trying to follow the rules is absurd. Their activity only becomes illegal when a kid changes his mind, not because of anything the school did.

Schools are supposed to be punished when they screw up. Not when a kid acts like a kid.

[TheAdvocate]

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