NORMAN, OKLA. (AP) - Oklahoma has so far spent more than $50,000 on an investigation into major NCAA rules violations by the men’s basketball program.
The university on Tuesday released the investigation’s costs to The Associated Press in response to an open records request. Oklahoma listed payments totaling $50,057 to the legal firm of Bond, Schoeneck and King since September 2009 while looking into the program’s second set of major rules violations in five years.
The firm also performed an audit of the Sooners’ compliance policies last year.
Oklahoma announced in July that it was admitting to two major rules violations by former assistant coach Oronde Taliaferro. The NCAA’s infractions committee has not yet decided whether to accept Oklahoma’s proposed penalties, which include two additional years of probation, vacating the wins from a 13-18 season in 2009-10, taking away one scholarship and restricting recruiting.
The university did not release details of the expenses, which pale in comparison to the $800,000 Ohio State said it had spent on a consultant for its investigation and for an information technology company to search through staff emails for information related to violations by its football program.
Oklahoma’s latest violations occurred while the school was on NCAA probation for major rules violations involving recruiting phone calls by former coach Kelvin Sampson in a case that ended in 2006 and major infractions involving football players being paid for work they weren’t doing at a Norman car dealership in a 2007 case.
There were also major rules violations by the men’s and women’s gymnastics teams considered in the football case.
The university has asked that it not be punished as a “repeat violator” even though it qualifies as having major violations again within a five-year span.
Oklahoma claims Taliaferro broke NCAA rules by failing to report that a player had received an impermissible extra benefit and by lying to Oklahoma and NCAA enforcement staff during the investigation. Taliaferro resigned early in the investigation.
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