OSU hit with penalties in February

The NCAA prohibited Ohio State’s football coaches from making telephone calls with high school recruits for two weeks in February as a penalty for impermissible calls over the previous two years.

The violations were among those in the football and men’s basketball programs released Wednesday by Ohio State in response to a public records request.

Between March 2017 and June 2018, football coaches and an unnamed member of the team’s support staff placed seven impermissible phone calls with recruits. The coaches included Urban Meyer, who called a prospect in September 2017 for the second time within a week. It was one more than allotted under NCAA rules.

After reporting the violations in December 2018, Ohio State prevented Meyer from calling recruits from Dec. 20 to 26, one week before he retired after seven seasons.

Other coaches faced similar restrictions before the NCAA instituted additional discipline for February. Ohio State said the violations were reported late due to errors from its recruiting monitoring software. Impermissible phone calls was one of four NCAA secondary rules violations involving the football team that Ohio State reported during the 2018-19 academic year.

In other instances, defensive line coach Larry Johnson sent an impermissible text to a recruit belonging to the class of 2021 in January 2019. The school said Johnson had “mistakenly believed” the player was part of the 2020 class.

Ohio State later barred Johnson from sending electronic messages, also including emails or direct messages on Twitter, for one week, and issued a letter of education to the football staff about contact with recruits.

Other football violations were for preferential treatment and impermissible promotion.

An unnamed football player received “one night of lodging” from a friend, as well as another impermissible benefit that was redacted in the report. The school determined the player received preferential treatment, because, “under NCAA interpretations, the relationship did not meet the preexisting relationship test,” according to the report.

In men’s basketball, Ohio State reported one minor violation. The incident involved players putting in time with an unidentified local trainer during the summer of 2018. According to the report, two current members of the team received free or belowcost workouts.

One of them paid half of the standard $50 cost for an off-campus workout, while another worked out with the trainer on campus and alongside a studentathlete from a different institution and didn’t pay his $25 share of the fee.

While that latter workout was taking place, a member of the coaching staff stopped in to say hello and was present for less than five minutes while he was warming up. A member of the program’s video staff was also present, filming the workout for the trainer who had also posted images and videos of himself working out current members of the team to his social media channels.

As a result, Ohio State declared the two athletes ineligible until they repaid the value of what was deemed their impermissible benefit to a charity. They did so and were reinstated.