NCAA announces punishment for NFL assistant coach Charlie Strong

Charlie Strong was just handed down a fairly significant punishment from the NCAA from various infractions during his time as the South Florida head football coach.

On Friday, the NCAA issued a media release outlining a wide array of violations committed by both the football and women’s basketball programs while Strong was employed as the Bulls’ front man.

If Strong ever wants to return to the collegiate ranks, he will have some significant hurdles in front of him, including a one-year suspension.

“A suspension for the former football head coach, in which any member school that employs the coach in an athletically related position must suspend the coach from all activities for one football regular season contest in the coach’s first season,” the statement said in regarding to Charlie Strong, specifically.

Strong currently serves as the assistant head coach and linebackers coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

What exactly did Charlie Strong do wrong at South Florida?

While the language in the NCAA statement is cumbersome and somewhat vague at times, Football Scoop provided a bit of insight into the investigation.

The USF athletic department was hit with a “failure to monitor” penalty overall.

The violations were discovered and reported in August 2017 and March 2018.

As a result, the athletics department was placed on three years of probation, plus a $10,000 fine and a fine of 0.5 percent of the football and women’s basketball budgets. Jeff Scott’s football program will also be docked two scholarships for the 2022-23 academic year.

In football, the Bulls repeatedly went over the number of allowable coaches, as compliance staff found off-the-field staff conducting drills and reviewing film with players

“Rather than stop once discovered, the NCAA said USF simply got more sophisticated,” Zach Barnett of Football Scoop said.

Barnett then added part of the media release from the NCAA and bolded the font he added based on research.

When the South Florida compliance department learned of the football violations, it provided additional rules education to the football staff, including the former football head coach. Following that rules education, the football program continued to allow seven noncoaching staff members to participate in skills instruction. Furthermore, according to the agreement, equipment managers used headsets to alert noncoaching staff members when compliance staff were attending football practices, so the additional violations of countable coaches rules were not discovered.

Charlie Strong has served in various collegiate coaching positions since 1983 and his last stop in the NCAA ranks was as a defensive analyst on Nick Saban’s 2020 Alabama staff. Like Urban Meyer, this is Strong’s first-ever season in the NFL ranks, and based on this update, he’s likely hoping to remain at the professional level for a while where these sanctions can’t impact his job status.