Mizzou Vacates Men's Basketball Wins Over Illegal Donor Gifts To Athletes

The joint investigation with the NCAA found school donors were providing “impermissible benefits” to student athletes.

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The University of Missouri has vacated men's basketball wins from the 2013-14 season following a 19-month investigation that found various NCAA rule violations.

The most serious of infringements was a Mizzou athletics donor "[providing] impermissible benefits to three men's basketball student-athletes and one prospective men's basketball student-athlete from 2013-2014," investigators found.

Those "benefits" included compensation for work not performed at a business through a summer internship program, through which the donor also provided "other impermissible inducements and extra benefits," including housing, $520 in cash, transportation, iPads, meals, use of a local gym," according to the investigation carried out by the university and NCAA.

The University was also found to have failed to fully research the internship provided by the donor and check documentation. The same donor "had multiple impermissible recruiting contacts with a prospective student-athlete and paid for a meal for a non-scholastic coach, in violation of NCAA bylaws."

A second donor provided impermissible benefits to 11 student-athletes and three members of one student-athlete's family from 2011-2014, the investigation found. While the athletes did not receive any cash compensation from the donor, they were given "a 'friends & family' reduced rate at a hotel, as well as meals and a ride on a recreational boat," investigators found.

A Missouri men's basketball student manager also provided transportation for multiple athletes to the hotel from the campus, all in violation of NCAA bylaws.

The donor was named as a party of interest in a second, less serious violation in which a former associate head coach gave the phone number of a prospect's mother to the donor to "arrange for rental housing," which the family paid a market rate for, according to the investigation.

The full list of self-imposed sanctions, including the vacating of wins, is as follows:

• Restitution and withholding from competition for impermissible benefits received by student-athletes was imposed as necessary.
• The former associate head men's basketball coach was prohibited from off-campus recruiting for a period of three months while the review process was underway.
• The university permanently disassociated Representative #1, prohibiting him from receiving tickets, making donations or otherwise representing the university.
• The university disassociated Representative #2 for a period of two years, prohibiting him from receiving tickets, making donations or otherwise representing the university.
• The university vacated all wins from the 2013-14 season.
• The university will pay the NCAA a fine in the prescribed amount of $5,000.
• The university self-imposed the loss of one men's basketball scholarship in 2015-16 and an additional scholarship loss to be incurred no later than the 2017-18 season.
• The university placed restrictions on the recruiting activities of the men's basketball staff during the years of 2014-15 through 2016-17.
• The university imposed a one-year postseason ban for the 2015-16 men's basketball season, which prohibits the team from participating in the 2016 SEC Men's Basketball Tournament, and any other postseason competition sanctioned by the NCAA. As such, the university will not receive any revenues from the 2016 SEC or NCAA men's basketball tournaments.

The university also said it was certain no current members of the program are implicated in the violations, which date back to 2011.

The NCAA did not immediately release a statement on the violations and self-imposed sanctions.