Tennessee avoids bowl ban, fined over $8 million

The Tennessee football program avoided a bowl ban but was fined more than $8 million by the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions, which announced its punishment for the Volunteers on Friday after finding more than 200 individual infractions committed by the school during former coach Jeremy Pruitt’s tenure.

Among the penalties handed down, Tennessee has been placed on five years’ probation, was given an $8 million fine among other financial penalties that will push the total closer to $9 million, and will see a total reduction of 28 scholarships.

The $8 million fine, which the NCAA said was “equivalent to the financial impact the school would have faced if it missed the postseason during the 2023 and 2024 seasons,” is believed to be the largest ever levied in an infractions case.

“The panel encountered a challenging set of circumstances related to prescribing penalties in this case,” the infractions committee said in its decision. “The panel urges the Infractions Process Committee and the membership to clearly define its philosophy regarding penalties — which extends beyond postseason bans — and memorialize that philosophy in an updated set of penalty guidelines.”

The NCAA will require Tennessee to vacate all wins and individual records in any game in which 16 individual sanctioned players participated. The specific games will be announced later, but sources told ESPN that any wins that are vacated would come from Pruitt’s three seasons as coach and not from the past two seasons under Josh Heupel.

The Volunteers were credited for their self-imposed 16-scholarship reduction over the past two years and will cut two more scholarships this year, meaning 10 additional scholarships will be taken away over the five-year probation period.

“Our athletics department, including our football program, is fiercely competitive and committed to winning the right way,” the Tennessee athletics department said in a statement. “We have navigated this case during a significant change at the NCAA, and we are pleased with how it was ultimately resolved. We always wanted to be accountable but were unwilling to sacrifice our innocent student-athletes’ ability to play in the postseason. The NCAA membership agreed with us.”

Tennessee had been charged with 18 Level 1 violations — the most severe in the NCAA rules structure — in July 2022. Included among the more than 200 infractions were charges of $60,000 in impermissible benefits and both Pruitt and his wife, Casey, making cash payments to players’ families.

Pruitt received a six-year show-cause order and would be suspended for the first full season if he is hired by an NCAA school. Pruitt, who was 16-19 in three seasons for the Volunteers, was fired for cause by Tennessee after the 2020 season and didn’t receive any of his $12.6 million buyout. He has been out of college or professional coaching since serving as a New York Giants senior defensive assistant in 2021.

Three other former staff members were also given show-cause orders.

Kay Norton, president emerita at Northern Colorado and the chief hearing officer for the panel, called the violations “egregious and expansive,” making it “one of the largest cases this committee has ever adjudicated.”

Because Tennessee showed “exemplary cooperation” after the violations were first reported, though, a postseason ban was removed from the array of available penalties. In this case, Norton said, the committee felt the “punishment fits the crime.”

“This panel found itself in a very difficult position as it was charged with applying existing penalties while also respecting the guidance from NCAA member schools,” Norton said. “… Today’s decision preserves opportunities for current students who were not involved in wrongdoing to compete at the highest level and during the postseason.”

Avoiding a postseason ban was a priority of Tennessee officials all along — to not punish players and coaches who weren’t a part of the program when the violations occurred. The lack of a bowl ban also continues a recent trend in NCAA cases.

Tennessee officials and others, including SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Pruitt, were in Cincinnati for two days in April as the committee on infractions heard Tennessee’s case, which was ignited when university chancellor Donde Plowman said in November 2020 that her office had received a credible tip on a potential recruiting violation within the football program. A week later, Tennessee hired the law firm Bond, Schoeneck & King to investigate any wrongdoing. That investigation lasted nearly a year and cost the university more than $1.5 million in legal fees.

“I have said from the beginning that we are committed to winning with integrity,” Plowman said in a statement Friday. “I believe we also resolved this case with integrity, always committed to holding ourselves accountable and wrong-doers responsible, while protecting the rights of student-athletes who had nothing to do with the infractions.

“We recognize this was a serious case, and the penalties we received from the Committee on Infractions are consistent with what we expected and negotiated with the NCAA enforcement staff last year.”

When Pruitt was fired in January 2021, Plowman had said in a news conference that she was shocked at the “number of violations and the number of people involved and their efforts to conceal their activities from our compliance staff and leadership within the athletic department.”

The NCAA found that Tennessee failed to monitor its football program, which was the lone charge that targeted the university and not coaches and staff members. Tennessee disputed that charge.

Tennessee was not accused of a lack of institutional control a year ago when the charges were announced, which lessened the potential scope of the penalties, as did the school’s series of self-imposed sanctions in anticipation of the NCAA ruling.

Other penalties handed down against Tennessee include the loss of 36 official visits, at least four per year, during the probation period and a limit on official visits at 10 regular-season games, four of those coming against SEC opponents. The program will be required to end 40 unofficial visits by recruits for 40 weeks over the next five years and cease communication with recruits for 28 weeks spread over five years.

Norton said the previous staff “demonstrated an unwillingness to even pretend to follow the rules.” Asked about recruiting penalties that will impact the current staff, Norton said the NCAA is concerned with protecting players but “not necessarily with restrictions that may affect the ability of recruiters going forward.”

When Tennessee said it was firing Pruitt, athletic director and Hall of Fame former coach Phillip Fulmer also announced his retirement. Danny White was hired as AD soon afterward and has since revamped almost the entire athletic department.

Tennessee is coming off an 11-2 season in 2022 under Heupel, the program’s first campaign since 2007 with double-digit wins. The Volunteers won the Orange Bowl and have significant momentum heading into 2023.

ESPN’s Heather Dinich contributed to this report.

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