USM Violations
It is not what’s on the outside, but what’s on the inside. Many of us have heard that cliché, once or twice. Nine times out of 10, the phrase is not in reference to a collegiate sports program.
The fresh look of jerseys, the new sneakers making its debut and top recruits playing don’t hold all the weight. What’s behind the scenes is just as important, maybe even more. Players don’t have to worry about that part as it is left to the athletic director and coaching staff.
Tough times for every program are bound to happen some point in the journey, but it’s how the program bounces back that will tell the whole story.
In 2016, the University of Southern Mississippi fell victim to what is the substantial power of the NCAA. To be specific, the investigations were done on the men’s basketball team at USM. Accusations included arranging fraudulent academic credit and impermissible financial aid.
During this time period, Donnie Tyndall was the head coach for the Golden Eagles. Tyndall is a huge basketball fanatic and found a love for coaching the sport of basketball. Tyndall is no stranger to another cliché: which is you have to get your foot in the door and work your way up. Tyndall did just that. St. Catharine College, located in Kentucky, posted a 30-5 record in the lone season Tyndall served as the head coach. Before steering the ship at USM, Tyndall was the head coach at Morehead State. From 2006-2012, Morehead State went 114-84 under Tyndall’s services.
From 2012-2014, Donnie Tyndall coached the Southern Miss Golden Eagles. Things were looking super positive for the men’s basketball team. In fact, Southern Miss posted a .776 winning percentage under Tyndall.
Remember the previously mentioned cliché about the inside being most important? Well, in this case, the analogy fits perfectly. While the Golden Eagles were putting out a dominant team on the hardwood, the behind the scenes actions were starting to catch up, and eventually take complete control of the game.
According to the NCAA’s full report, “a former head men’s basketball coach at The University of Southern Mississippi acted unethically and failed to promote an atmosphere for compliance when he directed his staff to engage in academic misconduct, according to a decision issued by a Division 1 Committee on Infractions panel.”
The report says “the former head coach” fabricated justifying payments to student-athletes. NCAA says Tyndall had staff members fill out improper coursework for seven prospects, so they could be available to pay immediately. USM basketball suffered a few harsh consequences.
Some of the penalties include:
A three-year probation to run consecutive to the present probation period. The three-year period will begin on Jan. 30, 2017, and run through Jan. 29, 2020.
A two-year postseason ban for the men’s basketball team. The school will be credited for the self-imposed postseason bans during the 2014-2015 and 2015-16 season.
A 10-year show-cause order for the former head coach from April 8, 2016, through April 7, 2026. During that period, if the former head coach is employed by an NCAA school, he must be suspended by the employing school from all coaching duties. Following that period, any NCAA school that hires the former head coach must suspend him for the first 50 percent of the first season he is employed.
A vacation of wins in which the men’s basketball student-athletes participated while ineligible. The university will identify the games impacted following the release of the public report.
A reduction of five men’s basketball scholarships over the next three years. The program reduced scholarships by one during the 2014-15 season and must reduce scholarships by a total of four over the next three years (self-imposed by the university).
A $5,000 fine plus an amount equal to 1 percent of the average total budget for the men’s basketball team over the previous three years (self-imposed by the university).
Aside from the multitude of punishments handed down from the NCAA, the university also had self-imposed consequences:
· A reduction in the number of men’s basketball official visits during the 2015-16 season by three.
· A prohibition from hosting any unofficial visits for a period of 10 weeks before the beginning of the fall 2016 semester.
· A restriction in recruiting communications with prospects by 10 weeks before the beginning of the fall 2016 semester.
· A reduction in men’s basketball off-campus recruiting days during the 2015-16 season by 25.
Both, self-imposed and NCAA punishments, are both very harsh, but a result that a program may get if it is found breaking the rules the NCAA has set in place.
As one figures, Donnie Tyndall says there isn’t any evidence that directly links him to these violations “except Adam Howard”.
The majority of the case vs. Donnie Tyndall is a spoken testimony by Adam Howard. Howard was an assistant of Tyndall at USM and the University of Tennessee.
"There are 4,000 pages of transcripts and documentation, 40 people were interviewed, and not one bit of evidence directly links me to the violations, and not one person involved linked me to the violations except Adam Howard," Tyndall told CBS Sports.
These infractions with the university are not the first time that Tyndall had run-ins with the NCAA. While at Morehead State, in 2010, the program was placed on a two-year probation for violations surrounding recruiting.
Donnie Tyndall’s name is added to an exclusive group, joining Dave Bliss as the only head coaches to ever receive a 10-year show-cause penalty. It is certainly nothing to brag about it and has been a little difficult for Tyndall to handle at times. As mentioned earlier, coaching basketball is where his passion belongs to.
“At first, you’re incredibly bitter, but if you can’t put it behind you and move past it, you’re not starting to live, you’re starting to die,” Tyndall said. “You’re bitter, resentful, you’re angry every day. And I was that for a year and a half to two years. And I had to make myself snap out of that and move forward.”
That’s exactly what the two parties, Donnie Tyndall and Southern Miss, had to do. Accept the penalties and move forward.
Fast forward to where we are today, year 2019, and the violations, and everything surrounding it, seems to be behind the Golden Eagles.
Southern Miss men’s basketball team finished second in the C-USA, posting a 20-13 record. The Golden Eagles’ season ended in the ROMAN CBI Tournament, after falling to Longwood, 90-68. It was before the season started where things started to look good again. Obviously, the university moved on from Tyndall and staff, and replaced him with Doc Sadler.
Sadler inherited a tough situation. A program that has pretty much fallen flat due to the wrongdoings of the previous head coach. Sadler was hired in 2014, and since then, has been on a mostly bumpy ride during his time. Sadler says there’s no doubt that what he, and the school, endured taught him how to be a head coach.
The biggest issue that Sadler and the university had to face was probably recruiting.
“We still get (NCAA) questions all of the time, and rightfully so,” Sadler said of recruiting now. “The other two or three schools that are recruiting them say, ‘They’re still on probation,’ and we are and we will be for a few more years. But, it really doesn’t affect any of our players and it doesn’t affect anything we’re trying to do at this point.”
Players want to win, and if the school isn’t in a position to satisfy a recruit’s aspirations, then the player will probably look elsewhere. “We’ve had players tell us, ‘We want to play in the NCAA Tournament and y’all are a long way from being there.’ We had a little success in the (C-USA Tournament) and now people are believing in what we’re trying to do.”
In order to attempt to persuade recruits in favor of the Golden Eagles, a few changes were made to Reed Green Coliseum. The arena was home to the men’s basketball team, the women’s basketball team and the volleyball team. The university added a volleyball facility in front of the Coliseum to create more space for basketball related activities. Along with that, the university added new video boards, new banners in the rafters and fresh, new paint on the hardwood. Making the extra effort to show recruits, with the idea of wearing the black and gold, that basketball is indeed a priority at Southern Miss.
The basketball program is looking better and better as the years go on. After Southern Miss recorded 16 wins during the 2017-2018 season, the Golden Eagles won 20 games during the 2018-19 season.
For the meantime, Southern Miss’s probation will end on January 29th, 2020.
Here's reporter Andrew Abadie at Conference USA.
