Long Island University was placed on a three-year probation on Monday after an NCAA investigation found the school allowed more than 1,000 noncertified student-athletes to compete or practice over a four-year period.<\/p>\n
The investigation, which took place during the 2020-21 through 2023-24 academic years, said LIU improperly certified the student-athletes in more than 30 sports, according to an online\u00a0document on the NCAA website<\/a>.<\/p>\n The student-athletes did not meet initial eligibility requirements and complete NCAA required forms such as student-athlete statements and drug testing consent forms.<\/p>\n \u201cLong Island University identified these eligibility certification matters through its compliance systems during a routine, university-wide review and promptly self-reported them to the NCAA,\u201d a university spokesman said in a statement to Newsday. \u201cThe issues date back several years and occurred during a period of operational disruption amid the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n \u201cThe NCAA recognized the University\u2019s collaborative approach throughout the review, and we worked closely with the NCAA while fully cooperating at every stage of the process.<\/p>\n \u201cLIU maintains a strong, institution-wide culture of compliance. LIU\u2019s current athletic compliance leadership and staff bring decades of Division I experience and are supported by comprehensive oversight systems. We are confident in our compliance structure and remain fully committed to operating with integrity and in full compliance with NCAA standards.\u201d<\/p>\n The report stated that initial eligibility certifications for 240 LIU student-athletes were not completed before they practiced, including 176 who \u201ccompeted impermissibly and\/or received actual and necessary expenses while ineligible or not certified.\u201d Another 658 student-athletes competed and 111 practiced without completing their required forms.<\/p>\n LIU submitted a self-report of its findings to the NCAA in July 2024, according to the report.<\/p>\n In addition to the three-year probation, the NCAA issued a $30,000 fine plus 3% of the budgets for the four highest budgeted sport programs \u2013 which were not revealed in the report \u2013 involved in the violations.<\/p>\n No postseason or television bans are part of the punishment. The probation period runs through May 3, 2029.<\/p>\n A two-week recruiting ban for all programs involved during the first year of probation, and participation in external review and volunteering for NCAA Academic Performance Program reviews also were issued.<\/p>\n During the 2019-20 academic year, LIU merged its two athletic departments: LIU Brooklyn (Division I) and LIU Post (then Division II).<\/p>\n According to the NCAA report, the merger was a major factor that led to the violations and \u201ca single compliance staff member was responsible for a 35 sport program athletics department.\u201d The report continued to mention that the teams being split between the Brooklyn and Post campuses \u201cled to communication inefficiencies between coaching staffs and compliance related to which student-athletes were on each squad.\u201d<\/p>\n LIU also had no \u201cformal process established to certify initial eligibility or check that certifications were accurate\u201d and \u201cthere were no areas outside of athletics that were included in verifying the initial eligibility status of student-athletes,\u201d according to the report.<\/p>\n The report also said that team and individual records in sports in which the ineligible players competed over the four-year period will be vacated. Those sports include baseball, football, men\u2019s basketball, women\u2019s basketball, men\u2019s golf, men\u2019s soccer, softball, men\u2019s indoor and outfield track and field, women\u2019s indoor and outdoor track and field, and women\u2019s volleyball.<\/p>\n LIU had plenty of athletic achievements this academic year that will remain in its record books. The university spokesperson confirmed that the report \u201cdoes not have any impact on the 2024-25 or current (2025-26) seasons, records or titles as there were no eligibility compliance matters in the last 2 seasons.\u201d<\/p>\n The Sharks\u2019 men\u2019s basketball team<\/a>, which plays its home games in Brooklyn, won this year\u2019s Northeast Conference regular-season and tournament titles and made its first NCAA Tournament appearance since the Post and Brooklyn athletic departments combined. Its football team, which plays its home games in Brookville and competes at the FCS level (formerly Division I-AA), notched its first win over an FBS opponent<\/a> last Sept. 6, a 28-23 win at Eastern Michigan. Its softball team clinched its second consecutive NEC regular-season title Sunday.<\/p>\n The three members from the NCAA Committee on Infractions panel who reviewed this case were Norman Bay, an attorney in private practice and the chief hearing officer for the panel, Jason Leonard, the executive director of athletics compliance at the University of Oklahoma, and Steve Waterfield, the athletics director at Oakland University. Stony Brook University was dealt a similar three-year probation in April 2005 after an NCAA report revealed it was poorly prepared for its move to Division I. Violations occurred regarding the certification of 53 athletes during the 1999-2000 and 2000-01 academic years, the first two during Stony Brook\u2019s jump from Division III to Division I.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long Island University was placed on a three-year probation on Monday after an NCAA investigation found the school…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":727314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,319,217,1529,85574,231,772,1544,66],"class_list":["post-727313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-college","tag-college-basketball","tag-colleges","tag-liu","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaab","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116528563068851657","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=727313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/727314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=727313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=727313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=727313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}