An unidentified University of Oklahoma football player committed an NCAA violation last spring by accepting a trip from a former teammate to a NFL draft party, the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch reported over the weekend.According to the report, the player took a trip that racked up $1,300 to attend the celebration, which his former Sooners' teammate's agent paid the bill. The school learned of the violations in November 2008 and turned over the information to the NCAA. The player was ordered to pay $832 of the money to a charity using money from his scholarship, Federal Pell Grant and school-issued spending money from the BCS national title game trip this past winter.
The player was re-instated without being suspended from competition. Neither the player, former player nor agent were revealed in the information the school turned over in the request by the paper. The story, the result of a six-month long investigation by the Dispatch that included open records requests for all 119 Football Bowl Subdivision schools, deals with how athletic departments across the country use varying interpretations of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act to shield information.
The report was especially interesting because the author of FERPA, former Sen. James L. Buckley, questioned how universities and athletic departments are interpreting the law. His intention was to shield student's report cards and transcripts.
What do you think of how schools use FERPA to shield everything from the names of athletes, boosters and former players guilty of NCAA violations to student-athletes who test positive for drugs and commit minor crimes?
