Mich. St. coach Izzo suspended for NCAA violation

[December 18, 2010]  EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- Michigan State coach Tom Izzo will serve a one-game suspension for a secondary violation of NCAA rules related to a summer basketball camp.

Michigan State officials said late Friday afternoon that the school employed someone associated with a potential recruit during a basketball camp in June. The person was paid $475 for five days of working with middle school-aged campers. Izzo said at a somber news conference he regrets what happened, but he called it an unintentional violation of the rules.

Izzo will sit out the No. 14 Spartans' game Saturday night against Prairie View A&M.

"As you can imagine, I'm upset about the situation, but it's an isolated, inadvertent situation," Izzo said. "In no way, shape or form did we think in any way we did anything wrong, but by the broad letter of the law here, it could be interpreted in many different ways, and I have to accept the interpretation of the NCAA."

Athletic director Mark Hollis said the NCAA -- which implemented a bylaw in October 2009 to police the "funneling of money to individuals associated with prospective recruits by providing employment in exchange for access" -- viewed the case as a secondary violation, but the school was told to suspend Izzo for a game.

The school says the NCAA has indicated the case will be closed once the suspension is served. Still, both Izzo and Hollis sounded miffed at the severity of the sanction, which Izzo called "unprecedented" for this type of situation.

Hollis said an "individual associated with a prospect" can be anybody who has communication with a prospect because of his athletic performance. Michigan State said the person employed at the camp wasn't accompanied by the prospect and didn't have any contact with the prospect while coaching at the camp.

"To our knowledge, the individual in this case is not a handler or an agent, no money was funneled to him for access to the recruit, and the individual's camp employment had no impact on the recruitment of the prospect," Hollis said. "I believe this falls into an unintended 'IAWP' violation when the individual maintained contact with the prospect for personal reasons and then was employed as a camp counselor at our camp. The prospect and the high school coach never viewed the individual as their guy or as MSU's guy."

The school didn't identify the prospect. When asked what the program could have done to avoid this violation, Hollis said: "Not have summer camps."

The school said the individual in question was paid the same amount as other camp counselors.

"I don't think that's the intent of the rule," Izzo said. "The intent of the rule, from what I understood it, was to make sure we're not paying exorbitant amounts of money to people who are bringing prospective student-athletes here. It's my total fault for not understanding every bit of the rule."

The Spartans (7-3) will be led by associate head coach Mark Montgomery in their game Saturday night. After that, Izzo's suspension will be over, although Hollis said he's worried the penalty will receive more attention than the underlying offense in this case.

"The institutional and NCAA enforcement staff concur that this was a secondary violation. We've had many of those before," Hollis said. "The penalty proscribed by the enforcement staff, however, is not a typical secondary violation penalty. In fact, it's not a typical penalty at all, as we believe it's the first of its kind.

"It creates a significant risk of confusing the public and the coaching community, which may well interpret the application of this new NCAA-proposed coaching suspension as an indication of intentional or meaningful misconduct by the coaching staff. That conclusion should simply not be made in this case."

[Associated Press; By NOAH TRISTER]

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