ACC and Big 12 Stay Steady as Chaos Reigns in College Football

The NCAA plans to continue its enforcement of tampering, officials tell Yahoo Sports, despite a request from the Big Ten to suspend such investigations. Executives from the Big 12 and ACC told Yahoo Sports on Thursday that they are opposed to pausing any tampering cases. An SEC official declined comment on the matter for now, but the league’s own commissioner, Greg Sankey, urged the NCAA to pursue tampering violations in an interview with Yahoo Sports just two months ago.

In a letter to the NCAA this week, the Big Ten urged the association to pause cases related to tampering while the NCAA works to reform and modernize policies. Such a move — the suspension of active investigations — requires a vote from the Division I Board of Directors and is not an NCAA staff decision. An NCAA working group — the infractions modernization task force — is already undergoing a full reform of tampering and other policies .

The process should not result in a pause in enforcement, conference leaders say. Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark says he’s “adamantly opposed” to pausing tampering, but is open to a discussion on rule reform. In a statement to Yahoo Sports, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips says he “does not agree” with suspending tampering investigations during the NCAA’s review of rules and calls enforcement of rules “critically important” in the current environment.

At the direction of the Division I Board of Directors — an executive group made up of school administrators — the NCAA has refocused efforts on pursuing tampering violators over the last two months. The association, in fact, has opened several investigations recently, even distributing a memo to schools announcing the pursuit of “significant penalties” for violators . Those penalties may include coach game suspensions, scholarship reductions and a vacating of wins for using a player tampered with.