IU releases NCAA reports (details and link).

IU has released the documents that it submitted to the NCAA. The Herald-Times has posted (free of charge) the .pdf of IU's report to the NCAA. I haven't yet seen the .pdf of the other documents, but will link it if I find it. Here are my quick thoughts as I go through the report (page numbers refer to the report, not to the .pdf document):

• The director of the Infractions Committee is named "Shep Cooper." That sounds like the name of an SEC athletic director or a kindly old Kentucky booster known for $100 handshakes. Maybe he'll go easy on us. (Yes, I recognize the irony. I'm writing a post about NCAA violations that occurred at IU and making "Kentucky cheats" jokes. Are such jokes now off limits? Nah. Maybe when a bundle of cash falls out of a FedEx envelope).
• There is a list of attachments (p. ii) that are not included in the .pdf.
• The report begins with a discussion of IU's adoption, upon hiring of Sampson, of Oklahoma's self-imposed sanctions. Of course, on May 25, 2006, the NCAA handed down harsher penalties than originally imposed by OU and IU. (pp. 1-4).
• Weekly compliance meetings (p. 4). The compliance office met weekly with the director of basketball operations (now Dan Dakich; former Tennessee coach Jerry Green for most of the relevant period; I will use "DBA" for short.). Those meetings included a review of handwritten and online call log information, Sampson's personal schedule, and the like.
• Monitoring of phone calls (p.5): The DBA collected the coaches' phone logs on a weekly basis and gave them to Compliance. The handwritten logs were entered by clerical staff into a program called "Cybersports." Coaches were required to sign statements declaring which phones they had used for recruiting during that week. Compliance staff reviewed the logs for possible violations. The Compliance office was responsible for cross-referencing the logs and the office and cell phone records of the coaches. Because he could make no calls, Sampson did not keep logs, but Compliance did compare his office and cell records to the compliance data in Cybersports (which apparently includes contact info for recruits). They note that the system improved over the months, some nice CYA language to set up what is to come, I'm sure.
• Monitoring of off-campus recruiting (p. 7): same procedure as above. Handwritten logs--->Cybersports. They also checked Sampson's schedule to ensure that he wasn't participating in off-campus recruiting, per the sanctions.
• Monitoring Sampson's public appearances (p. 7). The compliance office kept detailed records of all of Sampson's appearances. As has been reported before, IU went so far as to prohibit Sampson for speaking when there were high school-aged students, even non-athletes, present.
• List of weekly compliance meetings (p. 8). Here, we see a list of each weekly meeting, including the date, topics, and attendees. It continues to page 12. I'm sure we will refer back to the list. There is a further discussion of the general steps generally taken by the AD re meetings, tests, etc., and then we seem to get to the juicy stuff.
• Review of calls contrary to the sanctions (p. 13-15). First, there is a discussion of the chronology, and the discovery by an intern of a three way calling pattern involving Rob Senderoff's cell phone and Sampson's home phone. Two calls were discovered on July 10. Within 24 hours, the AD, the president, and Ice Miller were involved. Buried in a footnote on page 14 is an indication that IU received a clarifying e-mail concerning three way calls on June 13, 2006. This is a bit confusing. Apparently all coaches certified that they did not use their home phones to recruit. Obviously, Senderoff's records showed this not to be the case. The report says that Sampson's home phone records show no three way or recruiting calls on his home line. Is this consistent with the indication that Senderoff placed three way calls to Sampson's home? Hopefully that will become clear. After consulting with counsel, Senderoff produced home phone records that demonstrated, contrary to his signed statements to Compliance, he had been using his home phone to a significant degree. Jeff Meyer placed ten calls from his home, several of which violated the sanctions and one of which violated NCAA rules. Ray McCallum made one call from his home, and it was a permissible call. It's worth noting, as we go forward, that there were sanctions on the staff in general that went beyond limiting Sampson personally. This hasn't been discussed much, but could be crucial.
• Three way calls involving Sampson (p. 15): The report mentions 10-18 calls. It should be noted that indeterminate calls have been presumed by IU to be impermissible. First, it notes that then ten calls were outgoing calls, i.e., calls made by the assistant, not to the assistant. That seems different from what we had been led to believe. Note on page 16 that the June 13, 2006 clarification of the three way calls was requested by the coaches. Senderoff initiated all of the outgoing calls.
• Explanations for three way calls (p. 17): They note that Sampson did not instruct Senderoff to make these calls, and on one occasion believe, but was not certain, that Senderoff had initiated the call. All of the calls occurred in the evening. Sampson does not give out his home number to recruits, given that not all will be offered or will enroll at IU. He lives several miles out of town and has spotty cell phone reception. Senderoff apparently believed he was in a gray area and that by acting as an operator, he apparently did not realize he was violating the sanctions. Contrary to Sampson's and Senderoff's assertions, at least two of the recipients of the calls are adamant that both Sampson and Senderoff were participating in the entirety of the conversation.
• Other impermissible calls (p. 20). The review of the home records had the effect of rendering some properly logged calls impermissible. On page 21, we see a chart of calls by coach. Obviously, there is some overlap between NCAA violations and sanctions: Senderoff: 101 calls (99 violated sanctions, 34 violated NCAA rules). Jeff Meyer: 4 calls (4 violated sanctions, one violated NCAA rules); Sampson: 2 calls (2 violated sanctions, 0 violated NCAA rules). As to Sampson, it should be noted that his improper calls were not made during the period that he was prohibited from making any calls, but rather occurred either before or after the one year call ban, during the period in which certain call limitations applied to the IU staff generally. Also, one of the calls was rendered improper because of a previous, unrecorded call by Senderoff. In other words, Sampson had no way of knowing that call was improper when he made it.
• Senderoff apparently had no real explanation for why he didn't log the calls from his home phone. He indicated that it was his practice to generate phone logs by reviewing the history on his cell phone. The staff also did not seem to realize, prior to the May 25, 2006 report, that they were restricted from making calls in any way other than by NCAA rules.
• The report concludes with a list of the sanctions. It seems to me that the additional restriction on Sampson (he can call juniors once every other month instead of once a month) wasn't mentioned before, although the cover letter to the report is dated October 3, 2007.

Well, not much time now. It seems to me that overall, this isn't the end of the world, but there are some red flags here. More discussion later, possibly much later tonight.

EDIT: Originally, I was under the impression that IU was going to be releasing a report prepared by Ice Miller for IU, as well as the documents prepared for the NCAA. I seem to have been mistaken. The detailed report to the NCAA, summarized above, is the only lengthy report that has been released. It may be that this was the only report ever prepared. In any event, the H-T also has posted the exhibits to the report as well as the NCAA "self-reports," which are shorter documents prepared on NCAA forms relating to the violations described in the narrative report. Go here for links to the exhibits.