Explaining the violations for NCAA Basketball
In order to fully understand how serious, the NCAA allegations are it is beneficial to outline how the NCAA rates the infractions. They NCAA assigns violations based on a levels system. The levels stem from Level IV being the least severe to Level I the most severe. As will be discussed teams are able to get multiple violations of the same level.
The NCAA recently switched to this model to provide more clarity on the violations. This is a lot better than the broad brush their violations used to paint with when just describing a serious or minor violation. Under that model it was hard to determine what fell into each category, so as we all know the NCAA isn’t good at clarity, they released this model.
A level IV violation is a minor violation that is usually technical in nature and has to do with very minor infractions. These types of violations are handed down by the conferences and the NCAA does not usually have much involvement in these types of violations. Level III violations are handed out by the NCAA and have to do with some minor impermissible benefits that NCAA would deem as a competitive advantage. These are handed out by the NCAA enforcement agents.
The last two levels are the most serious in nature and are going to come with substantial penalties. Level II violations are not as serious as level I violations obviously, but they are no longer minor and involve substantial violations and potentially a substantial advantage. Level I violations are the most serious in nature and involve the most severe recruiting violations and the biggest competitive advantage. As the penalties get announced the difference between these two violations will be clear. The NCAA Committee on Infractions is the area that hands out these types of violations.