Iowa State’s major infractions case mostly centered around not logging recruiting calls when nobody answered
The NCAA rulebook is thick and we all get why. Every loophole will be taken advantage of, so the NCAA tries to close every one.
And one of the rules is that all calls are logged, even ones that aren't answered. Call a recruit and it goes to voicemail? It needs to be recorded.
Iowa State wasn't doing that well enough, and that's a big reason the school is involved in "a major infractions case,” according to multiple reports.
"The crux of the violations stem from ISU coaches failing to properly record phone calls in which they did not reach recruits or just left a message for them," the Ames Tribune wrote.
Six coaches (two current football assistants, two former football assistants and two men's basketball assistants) might a dreaded show-cause penalty. The Ames Tribune writes that Iowa State is seeking a two year probation from the NCAA as a penalty, but the NCAA will decide if that's enough. And the biggest part of the case is phone calls that were never answered.
Molehills and mountains and such.
There were other issues, obviously. The Ames Tribune said there were 152 "true" violations in football and 34 in men's basketball, and some in other sports as well. Those violations are calls that were "made in an impermissible time period, after another coach had already called, or was an impermissible call after another earlier call had lasted longer than three minutes."
But of the 962 impermissible calls in football, 810 were not logging calls properly. Of the 147 impermissible calls by men's basketball, 113 were because of logging issues, according to the Tribune. That's 83.2 percent of the impermissible calls that were from poor documenting. In the report, Iowa State takes blame for inadequate education, because many coaches didn't know about the need to document no-contact calls. Which makes sense, because having to do that is kind of silly.
But rules are rules, and the NCAA has them there for a reason. And 152 true violations by the football staff isn't anything to sneeze at. Still, when more than 80 percent of the major infractions case revolves around calls that were never answered, it seems like a bit of overkill.
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