National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has imposed sanctions on the University of California, Santa Barbara for violating various athletic program rules.
The association’s Division I Committee on Infractions panel found men’s and women’s cross-country and track programs and men’s water polo program violating athletically related activity restrictions and breaking impermissible benefits rules.
NCAA has put the school on two years of probation and imposed a fine of $5,000 plus 1 percent of each of the budgets of the men’s water polo, men’s cross country and women’s cross country programs.
During the current academic year, there will be a reduction of men’s and women’s cross country and track and field scholarships and men’s water polo scholarships by 5 percent followed by a 7.5 percent cut during the 2020-21 academic year.
“The violations in both programs were rooted in the failures of the two head coaches to maintain open lines of communication with UC Santa Barbara’s compliance staff,” the committee said in its decision.
“Both coaches operated independently of the compliance staff, either assuming they knew the rules or acting with indifference towards applicable rules. Their conduct resulted in multiple Level II violations of well-known NCAA rules.”
Last month, NCAA put Georgia Institute of Technology’s on four-year probation for major recruiting violations in its basketball team. The rules violations include its former assistant coach, Darryl LaBarrie, taking a team member to a strip club in Atlanta in November 2016, and facilitating improper recruiting contact with a person described in the notice as a representative of the school’s athletics interest.