OSU Secondary Violations Update 5/25

Our friends at the Columbus Dispatch released the specific secondary violations Ohio State may be facing, and Iraqi Information Minister OSU AD Gene Smith had a little trouble with his last public statement, according to the OSU Lantern.

From The Lantern:

"Smith said there were 12 pending secondary violations during a Tuesday interview with The Lantern. OSU spokesman Dan Wallenberg later said in a Wednesday email that the actual number of violations was less than 12.

Wallenberg did confirm that the additional violations are being “processed,” although he said he did not “know the status of each situation” in regards to whether it was being processed by the university or the NCAA."

The Dispatch posted the full list (which we'll get to after the jump) on Tuesday, so it may not be 100% clear which of these violations are "processing" or not. None of them appear to be particularly earth shattering though.

Another fun nugget from the Lantern article:

"Smith told The Lantern Tuesday the athletic department has 12 pending NCAA violations.

“We’ve got 12 pending,” Smith said. “It may turn out to be secondary. It may not.”

Smith clarified in a Thursday morning phone call that the potential violations would either be secondary or nothing at all."

Given everything that's happened over the past season, you'd think Smith would have learned by now the importance of being reeeeaaally specific in your language when it comes to possible NCAA violations. Step up your press conference hustle.

Specific violations after the jump:

The Columbus Dispatch has the full list of secondary violations. Thankfully, they all appear to be minor, although some do relate to the football team. Here are some of the highlights:

Football-The compliance office approved the use of mini basketballs during a football winter conditioning workout

Institutional – Athletics financial aid agreements were issued to three prospective student-athletes without being signed by the financial aid director

Baseball – A prospective student-athlete in grade 12 registered and showed up for an Ohio State camp for participants in grades 9-11 even though he was told he was not eligible to compete at the camp. A t-shirt was given to the individual to defuse the situation when he got upset that he couldn’t compete

Football – The program understood the aunt of a prospective student-athlete was his legal guardian and provided food and lodging expenses to her for the official visit.

Football – An assistant coach inadvertently posted on the Facebook wall of a 2013 prospective student-athlete, believing at the time he was using the email inbox function of Facebook.

Okay, so outside of maybe the football team paying expenses for the aunt, nothing on that list should strike fear into the heart of any fan (seriously? That mini-basketball thing is a violation?). Perhaps our compliance department missed the major scandals because they were too busy monitoring facebook walls and basketball usage. The NCAA is crazy, yo. In conclusion, it looks like OSU forgot to cross a few Ts, Gene Smith isn't great at press conferences, and working in a compliance department sounds like an absolutely horrible job.