NCAA Accuses A&M Corpus Christie of 8 Major Violations

[bullets13]

DALLAS -- The NCAA has accused Texas A&M-Corpus Christi of nine rules violations, including use of ineligible players, recruiting violations in men's basketball and lack of institutional control.

The alleged violations, eight of them major, occurred mainly between 2004 and 2008 in men's basketball, women's volleyball and men's tennis.

The NCAA's notice of allegations, obtained Saturday by The Associated Press, also accuses athletic director Brian Teter of not reporting to the NCAA his knowledge of two ineligible players and later submitting a false self-report regarding one of those players. Teter failed to conduct himself in accordance with the association's "high standards of honesty and sportsmanship," the notice said.

The NCAA charged the athletic department with a lack of institutional control, saying the school failed to monitor the eligibility of student-athletes, properly train staff in NCAA rules, police itself for rules violations and accurately report any violations.

The school has to respond to the allegations by Oct. 29 and is scheduled to appear before the NCAA infractions committee on Dec. 5 in Indianapolis.

In a statement, school President Flavius Killebrew said he does not want the school or its athletic department, which started in 1998, to be tarnished by the allegations.

"We take the issues presented to us by the NCAA very seriously," Killebrew said. "Our intercollegiate athletic program must be transparent beyond any reproach."

The report singles out two former compliance directors and Teter for failing to report ineligible players once they learned of them or for failing to withhold them from competition. A volleyball player was improperly given a sixth year of eligibility and a men's tennis player was given a partial athletic scholarship when he had not qualified academically and was later allowed to compete even after officials knew he was ineligible, according to the NCAA.

Teter did not immediately respond to an e-mail or a phone message left at his office by The Associated Press on Saturday. School spokesman Marshall Collins said Teter remains the athletic director and that Killebrew will ultimately decide his job status. The school received notice of the allegations Thursday, and the president has not decided a course of action, Collins said.

"He hasn't had time himself to read to see if there's anything that should be done at this time," Collins said.

The men's basketball program, led by former Miami coach Perry Clark, is also a target of the report. The NCAA alleges an assistant coach made at least 43 impermissible phone calls to four recruits. A separate allegation involves the program providing impermissible recruiting inducements to a possible transfer, including transportation to the border town of Laredo so the player could renew his immigration documentation.

Included among the allegations is a secondary violation involving men's basketball, in which the NCAA said Teter told Clark to use personal funds for recruiting and not program funds.

Clark did not immediately return a call to his office on Saturday.