Texas Tech imposes penalty for violations, awaits NCAA sanctions

Texas Tech announced the penalties Tuesday before releasing a 1,250-page response to 18 NCAA allegations leveled last October.

Football, baseball and men's basketball endured the brunt of the sanctions, part of a three-year probation.

"It's just important to face the issues, get it behind you and get it over with," athletic director Gerald Myers said. "The longer it lingers the more difficult it's going to be for a lot of reasons. That's why it's important we've already imposed really strong penalties."

The school will state its case April 24-25 before the NCAA Committee on Infractions in Cleveland. The committee usually takes more than a month to mete out punishment, if any.

Texas Tech admitted last October that four sports awarded too much scholarship money and 76 athletes competed while ineligible from 1991-97; the number has increased to 81 after recalculations, Texas Tech compliance director Bob Burton said.

On, Tuesday, the school accepted all or parts of 11 other charges related to improper benefits, academic wrongdoing and a lack of institutional control in football and men's basketball. Texas Tech will challenge three more charges, and wasn't sure about the other two.

Because of the sanctions, football will lose 14 scholarships in the next two years, baseball will lose a total of 7 1/2 through 2002 and the men's basketball team will shrink from 13 scholarship players to 11 for the next three seasons.

Men's track and golf and women's basketball were hit with lighter scholarship sanctions. All six sports, along with men's tennis and women's volleyball, also must forfeit every victory in which an ineligible athlete participated.

Men's basketball previously forfeited all of its Big 12 victories in 1997 and declared itself ineligible for postseason play.

The team also forfeited its two NCAA tournament victories in 1996 and said it would repay the NCAA the approximately $100,000 it earned.

Texas Tech lost $1.75 million in Big 12 bowl revenue last fall when the football team removed itself from postseason contention, forcing the athletic department to slash its budget by 15 percent across the board this fiscal year.

Ten ineligible football players competed in Texas Tech's 55-41 victory over Air Force in the 1995 Copper Bowl, documents show. But, Burton said the school's 1993 national championship in women's basketball won't be affected.

Burton declined to speculate on what other victories were endangered, but conceded the number could be high.

In the six-inch-thick response document, the university denied it failed to properly monitor use of a Florida correspondence course, that a former regent gave improper legal counsel to athletes and that a professor awarded unearned credit to a football player.

Texas Tech admitted to all or parts of charges involving academic misconduct by an assistant football coach, athletes' failure to pay off bail made by a booster, improper transportation given to athletes and other accusations.

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