Tennessee basketball coach Rick Barnes tries to do the right thing, gets NCAA violation
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Of all the ways to get an NCAA violation, Rick Barnes went an atypical route to get one.
No, the Tennessee basketball coach didn’t give money to recruits or players. Instead, he gave some money to an assistant coach.
According to the News Sentinel, Barnes felt that assistant Desmond Oliver deserved to be making as much as fellow assistant Michael Schwartz. But without the university budget available to give Oliver that increase those funds, Barnes gave him the money himself.
That, according to the NCAA, is a no-no.
The Level-III violation was self-reported after Barnes told his advisor about it back in October. Barnes said he didn’t realize that he was breaking an NCAA rule. The News Sentinel found out about the violation via an open records request.
“It was important to me that Des Oliver made the same amount of money as (fellow assistant Michael Schwartz),” Barnes told the USA Today Network. “I just felt those two positions needed to be equal. They felt it wasn’t in the budget. I just said, ‘I am going to pay it myself.’”
Barnes stopped the payments and the program won’t face any additional penalties from the NCAA. All of Tennessee’s self-reported NCAA violations were of the Level-III variety, which is a minor infraction. Those will result in a “mild” punishment from the university.
Tennessee is on fire having won 7 of its last 8 games to move into second place in the SEC.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
