Oklahoma Athletics releases statement about DeMarco Murray 1-game suspension for recruiting violations

On Tuesday, the NCAA suspended Oklahoma running backs coach DeMarco Murray for one game for contacting 17 different prospects and their families over 16 months when he wasn’t allowed to. Oklahoma athletics provided a statement to ESPN’s Heather Dinich on the situation.

“The University discovered the violations through its monitoring systems and investigated, reported, and addressed the matters promptly and appropriately,” the statement read.

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“The violations in question were limited to the actions of a coach who is no longer employed by the University and a current assistant coach. OU worked with the NCAA to manage the review and reach a conclusion, and penalties imposed by the University are already in effect.”

A former running back at Oklahoma and later the NFL, Murray began coaching in 2019. He started off as the running backs coach at Arizona before joining Oklahoma. Now, with this suspension, he’ll be unavailable for the Sooners’ first game of the season against Temple.

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According to a release from the NCAA, the school, Murray and enforcement staff agreed that the violations occurred. Among those issues, there were 65 impermissible phone calls and 36 impermissible text messages. DeMarco Murray also shared that he was not aware that a COVID-19 waiver of recruiting contact rules had expired at the time.

The NCAA enforcement staff found that Oklahoma had properly educated its coaches about new rules. So, he should have been aware. 

While Sooners head coach Brent Venables is considered responsible for his staff, in this case, punishment for him was not considered appropriate.

“Head coaches are presumed responsible for the actions of their staff, and as a result, Venables violated head coach responsibility rules,” the statement from the NCAA read. “In this case, however, some of the violations occurred prior to rules changes effective in January 2023 that shifted head coach responsibility rules from a rebuttable presumption to automatic.

“Because Venables was not personally involved in the violations and demonstrated that he promoted an atmosphere of compliance and monitored his staff, Venables rebutted his presumed responsibility for some of the earlier violations. For the same reasons, the parties also agreed that a suspension penalty for Venables was not appropriate.”

On3’s Dan Morrison also contributed to this article.