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From Myra Sims, Emory & Henry Director of Athletics,
regarding the NCAA's Ruling

The issue first came to my attention in late spring of 2013 as the result of a complaint to college officials from the father of a former football student-athlete.  That complaint led to an internal inquiry at the College which was conducted by an impartial faculty member and ultimately resulted in the College’s self-report to NCAA in late summer 2013.  The NCAA then conducted its inquiry which took about 18 months to complete. 

The inquiry by the NCAA showed, and College officials agreed, that in the recruitment of two prospective football student-athletes, that two different supporters of the College’s athletics program had impermissibly advocated for additional financial aid to be added to the financial aid packages.   In these cases, the College went outside of its normal awarding process in changing an award based on an appeal by a supporter, and by awarding endowed funds as part of an initial financial aid package.  As a result of the improper financial aid awards, these two student-athletes were both ineligible to participate in football during the 2012 and 2013 seasons and the eleven wins from those two seasons must be vacated.

During a subsequent review of all of the College’s 321 endowed scholarships, seven that had been set up between the years of 1981 and 2002 were found to impermissibly include athletics leadership or participation as one of several award criteria.  It is impermissible in Division III to use athletics as a consideration in financial aid awarding.   Upon discovering the problem with the seven scholarships, College staff members immediately began contacting donors or their families to remove athletics from the award criteria and this process was completed by summer 2014.  Because of the swift action taken to remove athletics from the award criteria, there are no current student-athletes at E&H who are receiving a scholarship that considered athletics.  As a result, no student-athletes who received these awards had their eligibility impacted and no teams are subject to a ban on post-season competition.

Upon learning of the situation with the first prospective student-athlete’s recruitment, the college acted promptly to investigate the matter, self-reported the apparent violations, cooperated fully with the NCAA and has instituted increased education on NCAA rules with enrollment staff, financial aid staff, coaches, trustees and alumni.  A failure by the institution to take these swift actions would have undoubtedly led to more serious repercussions.

In addition to the educational efforts, the athletics program does face some penalties.  Some of these penalties were self-proposed in our initial report to the NCAA and others were added by the NCAA Committee on Infractions:

  • Wins from the 2012 and 2013 football seasons must be vacated
  • Three years on probation—probation requires extensive reporting to the NCAA on various aspects of the program
  • The football coaches will be required to inform recruits that the program is on probation and explain the violations committed
  • The athletics department will be required to provide a statement about the infractions and a link to the NCAA public report on the athletics website and in the football program
  • Football coaches off-campus recruiting activities will be limited to 14 days per month during the probationary period
  • Trustees, alumni or any ‘representative of athletics interest’ shall not accompany coaches to off-campus recruiting visits for the first year of the probationary period, and finally
  • Other than coaches, trustees, alumni or any ‘representative of athletics interest’ shall not have contact with any prospective student-athletes on campus for the first year of the probationary period

I want to emphasize a few key points again:

  • We self-reported to NCAA as soon as we had knowledge that there might be an issue
  • In the initial report to us, NCAA staff found that there was no intentional misconduct on the part of anyone involved in these matters
  • We have implemented a much more robust program of education on NCAA rules that now includes a wider range of college staff members from not only athletics, but the offices of financial aid, admissions and advancement as well as trustees and alumni
  • These were isolated incidents and there are no widespread problems with our financial aid award process
  • No individual student-athletes face any further issues with their eligibility to participate
  • No teams face any post-season ban
  • This all occurred prior to the arrival of our current head football coach

While we deeply regret finding ourselves in this position, we do believe that we have implemented policies that will help us avoid future issues with NCAA rules compliance.  We feel that we have turned the page on this unfortunate chapter and are ready to move forward with one of the cleanest and most compliant Division III programs in the country.  We affirm our strong commitment to building an athletics program that is highly successful while adhering to the high standards of ethical conduct and fair play set forth by the ODAC and NCAA.