Alabama has reported 3 secondary recruiting violations, as reported by Ian Rapoport. Paul Gattis talks about it as well. These violations span from December 2006 to January 2007. Saban claims that he did not know about the violation involving the book gift by a booster. Additionally, the baseball team; men’s track and field team; women’s track and field team; women’s tennis team; and swimming and diving team committed one violation each. Check out the Rolltide.com rule violation procedure page.
While these make for great chat room fodder, they don’t add up to much. You don’t want to have a considerable amount of secondary violations add up. However, having a few a year really seems to go without any serious punishment from the NCAA.
In the world of fandom, there are people who view any violation by a rival institution as the worst of the worst. They live in a fairytale world where they are the good guys, and the rivals are the bad guys. Even when their school is accused of improprieties, they naturally assume that either: (A)there is a media bias, or (B) the rival school is out to get them. There are plenty of what I call “kool-aid fans” in both the Alabama and Auburn fan bases, since they drink the hometown kool-aid.
In reality, many schools commit violations every year. Most of the SEC schools are guilty of secondary violations. Those who spend their time trying to search and prove “cheating” by another school are ultimately left craving for more. Their hope for days past (Examples: a guy named Bobby wishing it was 2001 again for Alabama or a guy named Shane watches every little move a simple Auburn pastor makes) causes them to constantly search for even the slightest form of cheating. This causes them to become, well….. complete and total losers.
If certain fans want to gripe about Alabama ‘getting away’ with something, I say let them since it doesn’t mean anything. There is a considerable amount of proof that many other schools have turned themselves in for secondary violations and have not faced any considerable NCAA punishment. If you want to have one school punished, you need to include EVERY school that has broken rules that are similar (including your school too). In the end they’ll learn to shut up.
Let’s take a look at a few of the secondary violations committed by other schools (some may not be listed, but I will provide links to documents from the schools admitting to secondary violations):
