The Seattle Times

(MCT)

The NCAA belted Eastern Washington University's football program with probation and significant sanctions Wednesday, and the fallout stretched 60 miles south to Washington State.

WSU football coach Paul Wulff, who headed Eastern's program during the 2003-07 period when the violations occurred, is forbidden to have contact with his team for the first three days of workouts next fall.

Eastern's penalty is more severe for a variety of transgressions, including:

_Improper practice-related activities by ineligible players;

_Excessive coaches above the NCAA limit of 11;

_Room and board for two players who weren't eligible to get it before classes began.

The NCAA whacked Eastern with a three-year probation; banned the Eagles from postseason play in 2009; reduced the total scholarship limit from 63 to 61 for three years; trimmed the allowable number of football coaches from 11 to 10; and set a limit of three non-qualifiers (players who lack the freshman-eligibility threshold in either core classes or standardized test) to three per year for three years. The NCAA report said Eastern had averaged seven non-qualifiers a year.

Wulff was tagged with a failure-to-monitor finding and Eastern for a lack of institutional control. In its report, the committee on infractions wrote that it "is most concerned that as (Wulff) learned of various violations . . . (he) did not report them to the institutional compliance office."

In a conference call Wednesday, WSU athletic director Jim Sterk said, "I don't think there was an environment or culture" of strict compliance at Eastern because of understaffing.

The NCAA committee on infractions made it clear there was lax oversight in Eastern's athletic department during the academic four-year period, writing that the school "had five athletic directors and three presidents, making it difficult to implement a comprehensive compliance system or establish long-term continuity."

It also noted that one person was the compliance coordinator, faculty athletic representative and had teaching responsibilities, saying "it was simply not feasible for one individual to hold three such diverse and responsible positions."

"Along with that," Sterk said, "Paul didn't have a secretary and a strength coach part of the time. Yeah, there were mistakes made, and Paul's sorry. He was trying to do the best he could at the time."

The report cited 13 players who took part in "practice-related activities" even though they were non-qualifiers and ineligible to do so. In saying those players "observed and attended" practice sessions and took part in conditioning "on an adjacent field," the report seemed to stop short of alleging the players joined general practice drills.

Because several student-assistant coaches - some not enrolled as full-time students, as required - helped with the duties of full-time coaches, they counted against the program limit of 11 and caused Eastern to exceed it.

Sterk said when he hired Wulff in December 2007, he was already aware of an investigation into improprieties at Eastern, and said the issue was vetted both with Eastern and NCAA officials. But Sterk expressed surprise at the heavy institutional-control finding.

Sterk said the arrival of Wulff's staff from a lower level (the former Division I-AA) prompted close compliance scrutiny at WSU, both because some rules are different and because WSU officials believed controls might be looser at the lower level.

"We have systems where we're proactive with it," said Sterk, citing compliance and academic-advisory staff. "It doesn't ever rise to this level."

Wulff, out of town Wednesday, was quoted in a WSU statement, "At no time did I ever intentionally violate NCAA rules. Now that I've been immersed for more than a year in the athletic department and the excellent compliance support it provides, I am confident situations such as these will never happen again."

Scott Barnes, an associate athletic director at Washington until a year ago, was AD at Eastern during the first two years of the violations. He did not return a phone call seeking comment.

In addition to the non-contact order for next fall's early practices, Wulff is required to attend NCAA regional rules seminars for the next three years.