NCAA votes to introduce stricter penalties, punishments for future infractions cases

There could soon be stricter penalties for breaking NCAA rules.

The NCAA announced on Tuesday that the Division I council has voted to “introduce a package of proposals for penalties focused on personal accountability in the infractions process.”

The potential changes could begin as soon as January of 2024. The stricter penalties would include:

• Publicly naming individuals involved in wrongdoing and creating a public database of coaches with a history of Level I/II violations.
• Expanding coaching suspensions to include days between contests.
• Expanding disassociation penalties for boosters engaged in rules violations.
• Attaching penalties for schools that employ individuals during a show-cause order.

The potential rule change to expand coaching suspensions to include days between contests would impact similar suspensions to the one Jim Harbaugh faced to start this season. The Michigan head coach missed the first three games of this season but was still able to be around the team. He simply couldn’t coach on game days.

If the rule change does in fact take place, coaches who commit NCAA penalties will not be allowed around their team during their suspension.

It’s also clear that the NCAA is interested in giving tougher penalties to schools who have boosters committing rules violations, as well as schools who hire coaches during a show-cause order.

Andy Staples criticizes NCAA over Tez Walker, Darrell Jackson waiver denials

It will be interesting to see what the feedback is if the NCAA does introduce stricter penalties in January.

The organization has been criticized plenty already in 2023 after denying waivers for multiple players.

On3’s Andy Staples was not happy that North Carolina transfer receiver Tez Walker and Florida State transfer defensive lineman Darrell Jackson both had their waivers denied just weeks ahead of the 2023 season.

“In the offseason, the schools complained a bunch,” Staples said. “They felt like the one-time transfer was fine but the transfer rules were being abused. People were transferring multiple times and they said they didn’t want that. They said they wanted that second transfer, if you hadn’t graduated, they wanted it to be really tough to be able to play right away. Now a couple waivers have been denied and I guess the schools got what they wanted but they, because they did this, and the NCAA look like a bunch of jerks when you take some of these stories into account.

“I’ve always said the NCAA needs a vice president of common sense because the VP of common sense could look at these situations and go, ‘If we did this, would anybody care if we didn’t follow the exact letter of the rule? Because if we follow the exact letter of the rule, we’re gonna look like a bunch of jerks. So instead of that, maybe we just let this one go.’ But that never happens at the NCAA and you get situations like this.”