Athletic Department Gearing up for Appeals Process
STILLWATER – The past week for Oklahoma State men’s basketball has felt like a nightmare that you just can’t wake up from. The NCAA levied severe penalties against the program regarding former associate head coach Lamont Evans’ involvement with the FBI’s investigation into college basketball’s seedy underbelly of pay for play or coaches, agents, shoe companies etc. accepting bribes etc.
The penalties, for a program that wasn’t involved and didn’t receive any recruiting, on or off the court advantage, is a one-year postseason ban for the 2020-21 season, a lost of three total scholarships over the next three seasons and a three-year probation period for the next three years among others.
The deadline date for Oklahoma State to file an appeal against the NCAA’s penalties is June 20 and fear not Oklahoma State fans, as the title of this article states, the athletic department is working on dotting all its I’s and crossing all its T’s.
A who’s who group of five members of the athletic department, Mike Holder, Chad Weiberg, Kevin Klintworth, Kevin Fite and Mike Boynton were at The Hideaway for lunch on Thursday. They were partly working, but they were mainly taking a much-needed break from working the appeals case all morning.
The five had been holed up in a conference room in GIA all morning and were headed back following the lunch break.
While the deadline to have the appeal paperwork submitted is June 20, a source inside the program told Pokes Report that the athletic department is going to try and get as close to the deadline as possible before submitting the paperwork.
Related: NCAA penalties against Oklahoma State are unprecedented
As we all know, once the paperwork is submitted, there’s a 110-day window in which the NCAA will review the appeal and release its decision on whether to uphold, dismiss or change the penalties.
That source also told me there are multiple different avenues, including the legal system, should the NCAA uphold the penalties.
While nothing is guaranteed, I think it’s safe to assume the Cowboys will be playing a full season in 2020-21. While this case is unprecedented in terms of the penalties levied based on the rules not broken by Oklahoma State, somewhere you can look is the Memphis/James Wiseman case.
The former top-ranked freshman and potential top-five 2020 NBA Draft pick, was deemed ineligible, though it was up to the school to make the call to play him or sit him, as he accepted $11,500 from Penny Hardaway to move from Nashville to Memphis, TN prior to Wiseman’s junior season.
Hardaway and Wiseman then filed a temporary restraining order that put the NCAA’s ineligibility decision on hold pending further litigation in order for Wiseman to play throughout the season. While Wiseman eventually withdrew the restraining order and sat out the remainder of the season to prepare for the NBA, there’s definitely precedent there for Oklahoma State to follow suit legally.
