The NCAA Infractions Committee announced today that it will penalize the University of Colorado $100,000 for infractions involving the undercharging of walk-on student athletes at the training table.
The NCAA ordered the University of Colorado to pay $100,000 over a two-year period to a charity devoted to solving hunger in the local community. Colorado will be on two years’ probation and will lose one football scholarship a year for three years.
School officials announced in a release that they would not appeal. A news conference was scheduled later this afternoon.
Over a period of five years, the school said 133 walk-ons in six programs were allowed to eat at the training table for the regular student fee rather than the increased charge for athletes.
In the release, CU officials said former women’s basketball coach Ceal Barry, who is now an associate athletic director, discovered the inaccuracies on Sept. 16, 2005, after having a conversation with a student athlete. The school said it was relayed to the NCAA “shortly thereafter.”
Colorado undercharged the student athletes $61,700 over five seasons, starting in 2000.
According to the school, the violations came two ways: walk-ons who ate at the training table even though their practice schedules did not preclude them from dining at residence halls or walk-ons who lived off campus and purchased training-table meal plans at residence-hall rates directly from the athletic department rather than directly from the school’s housing and dining department.
“Based on that conversation, Ceal deduced that we were not complying with NCAA training-table rules,” CU athletic director Mike Bohn said in the statement. “That immediately jump-started our self-reporting to the NCAA, our investigatory process and our making vital corrections to our past mistakes.”
From that point, the NCAA Infractions Committee began its investigative process, which took less than a year, Paul Dee, acting chairman of the NCAA Infractions Committee, said earlier in a teleconference.
Staff writer Joel A. Erickson can be reached at 303-954-1980 or jerickson@denverpost.com.
