Eastern football violated rules

Eastern Washington University’s football program has violated some NCAA rules, Eagles coach Paul Wulff acknowledged Tuesday.

The violations center around the number of coaches and student assistants used by the Eagles, according to the outside investigation the school requested and submitted to the NCAA in early May, and whether those violations provide “any significant competitive advantage for the program.”

According to the report, which The Spokesman-Review obtained, it appeared that in several seasons since Wulff became the head coach in 2000, there were more than the NCAA-mandated 11 coaches on the staff. Also, during that time, student assistants were usually not taking enough credits as per NCAA rules.

“We’ve done the best we can,” Wulff said. “We have violations like every single institution has. We do our best to report what we know. We try to do everything as accurately as we possibly can.”

Exceeding the 11-coach limit – for I-AA or as it is called by the NCAA now, the Football Championship Division – appears to be more of a misunderstanding.

NCAA rules count all coaches, including part time and volunteers, “as soon as the individual participates in any manner in the coaching … in practice, games or organized activities directly related to that sport.”

The outside report by attorney Karen Harwood found: “Perhaps the misunderstanding occurred, at least in part, because of imprecise usage of the term coach over the years in such documents as travel manifests, team programs and lists of those attending program meetings.”

She used for example Larry Beealert, a life skills coach who works with all of Eastern’s athletic programs, who is referred to as a coach but does not coach football players. He attends most practices, meetings and games.

“Once these individuals are correctly identified, there is no question that the EWU football team complied with the 11-coach requirement,” the report concluded.

Student coaches not taking enough credits is another matter.

Student coaches must be full-time (12-credit) students except for their last quarter or semester of education.

The report said that 11 times over Wulff’s seven seasons seven student assistants were not taking enough credits.

“It appears that these violations were not intentional, but rather occurred because of a lack of knowledge,” the report found. In one case, a student assistant who had a similar position at another school previously said he was not a full-time student there, either.”

The conclusion of an internal investigation prompted the university to make a form for student assistants to sign that spells out academic requirements.

The concern about “competitive advantage” is related to the 11-coach rule. Student assistants cannot be hands-on coaches unless they are included in coach count.

Duties of EWU student assistants are weighted heavily toward clerical work because the program does not have secretarial or administrative staff support “with the exception of the occasional ‘work-study’ student worker.

“While performance of these duties is important to the program … loss of the assistants would have only a minor affect on the direct coaching of the team. However, the loss would have a great adverse impact on the administrative end of the program. … Therefore, the direct competitive advantage has been negligible, although since EWU lacks the paid clerical support present in many athletic departments, the overall benefit to the football program has been great.”

The report said Wulff was unaware there was no limit on student assistants as long as they were not hands-on coaches, until researching bylaws about the credits violation. Wulff had limited the team to two student assistants.

“That he complied with his understanding of this (albeit, nonexistent) rule shows his intent to abide by the bylaws the use of student assistant coaches as he understood them,” the report said.

Self-imposed sanctions offered by the school include a limitation of one student assistant for six years, a letter of reprimand for Wulff and a requirement to attend a NCAA compliance seminar.

“Eastern is in the market for a new strength and conditioning coach after Darin Lovatt recently took a position at Boston College.

Wulff said he hopes someone fills the position as soon as possible since a part-time employee will be in charge of the summer program that begins Monday.