‘Pocket dialing,’ inadvertent texts result in NCAA violations for UGA
“Pocket dialing” and inadvertent text messages have generated a pile of paperwork for Georgia, the SEC and the NCAA the past two months.
According to documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Wednesday afternoon via the Freedom of Information Act, UGA had to report six secondary violations in five sports since April. Two of those violations were inadvertently committed in one instance last month by head football coach Mark Richt.
In Athletic Director Greg McGarity’s letter of explanation to the SEC Commissioner Mike Slive, dated May 27, he explains that Richt accidentally sent two text messages from his Blackberry to the father of football prospect Jordan Jenkins of Harris County on May 26th (text messages to prospects or their family members are impermissible per NCAA rules until one day after a prospect has signed a national letter of intent with the school). In the first instance, Richt received a text from Ron Jenkins asking for camp dates. Since Richt did not have the number programmed in his phone, the text was identified as “unknown.” Richt intended to forward the text to a recruiting assistant for identification but accidentally replied to Mr. Jenkins, which was a violation NCAA Bylaw 13.4.1.2.
Richt immediately reported the inadvertent violation to compliance director Eric Baumgartner, who subsequently asked if Mr. Jenkins had replied. In an attempt to forward Mr. Jenkins’ response to Baumgartner, Richt accidently replied to Mr. Jenkins again, hence he had to report another text violation.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is how the majority of your schools’ compliance time and resources are spent. During this same time period, UGA had to report:
- Men’s basketball assistant coach Kwanza Johnson sent an impermissible text to prospect Robert Carter of Thomasville on April 25. Johnson immediately reported to the UGA complaince office that he had intended to send the note to Carter via his phone’s email function (email is permissible). Nonetheless, UGA self-imposed a 30-day communication ban in May and prohibited Johnson from phoning prospects for two weeks, which the SEC accepted without adding penalties.
- A softball assistant coach had to report calling a prospect’s mother twice in the same week. The second call was a “pocket dial,” according to the letter of explanation. No further penalties were imposed.
- New volleyball coach Lizzy Stemke self-reported sending what was determined to be an impermissible email to a UGA alum who has a “prospect-aged daughter” in high school. UGA self-imposed a penalty prohibiting it from sending recruiting materials to said prospect for a period 60 days this fall.
- A gymnastics team trainer sent a text to a signee advising her about a medical exam and dorm assignment before her signed national letter-of-intent had been processed. No penalties were extended.
Georgia’s football program has had to report at least two other secondary violations this year. In March, it reported that the use of a “missing-man formation” during Isaiah Crowell’s official visit in January violated the NCAA’s rule forbidding game-day simulations. Also, in February the Bulldogs had to report a violation when former players Randall Godfrey and David Pollack attended the late-January announcement of eventual signee Ray Drew in Thomasville.
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263 comments Add your comment
Carl Haddow
June 16th, 2011
5:54 pm
Mark Richt is already at the top of the CoachWatcher Hot Seat. …This doesn’t help. Check it out: http://www.CoachWatcher.com
Einsteindawg
June 16th, 2011
5:59 pm
Wow, guess these secondary violations really gave us an unfair advantage. Richt needs to learn from Tressel, Chizick, Trooper Taylor, and Lane Kiffin.
Dawghater
June 16th, 2011
6:06 pm
Well Rocket Science, fall practice is coming and soon after the arrests will follow. I think it was 11 or so last year. A high mark set by the 2010 squad but I have full confidence you can aim higher for 2011.
Dawghater
June 16th, 2011
6:09 pm
South Ga Dawg – you can take care of that yourself. All the gnats are in S. GA and the rednecks too!
SEC1
June 16th, 2011
6:10 pm
Was he pocket dialing or playing pocket pool? Maybe the pocket pool resulted in the pocket dialing. Would that be considered sexting then? Should Richt resign? Man, what a quandary…
Einsteindawg
June 16th, 2011
6:14 pm
SEC1, I’m thinking it was “pocket pool”, too. Richt alsways has that “glazed look” in his eyes…especially when it’s third and long.
zincc
June 16th, 2011
6:17 pm
My question ….. how is it that the people who have “graduated” a major college can’t operate a cell phone text message? Maybe they need to take a course in operations of said cell phones!
It Ain't Rocket Science
June 16th, 2011
6:37 pm
Zincc,
I take you have never made a mistake then? Might he have been in a hurry and inadvertently hit the wrong little button on the blackberry? When he makes a major violation, it will be news worthy. This is petty crap and he even self reported it. Surely, there is no one on here who has never made a mistake. If so, I would suggest they are in the wrong dimension, as heaven sure as the devil isn’t earth.
Tron Carter
June 16th, 2011
7:05 pm
dawghater+ kneepads+ 7-11 dumpster on North Avenue go together like Peanut Butter and Jelly
NCAA Violations? YAAAAWWWWNNNN
Tron Carter
June 16th, 2011
7:10 pm
George P. Burdell,
Good One. Such Comedy. You’re the best. How do you come up with such clever stuff so quickly. Amazing.
Suck it Techhie
PT
June 16th, 2011
7:18 pm
They know what they are doing. Would it not be worse, if there was no response to a father’s request?
bitter cheater's gaylor
June 16th, 2011
9:07 pm
ohio st and the university of pay for play————–the diffenition of the word————
DROPPING THE HAMMER————DEAD IN THE WATER————ALL LOOKS AND NO BRAINS
———-GETthe picture sir–cheats alot————-the clock is ticking pay for play!!!!!!!–
————————DEATH PENALITY—————-HAHAHAHAHAHAH
CHUCK UGA
June 16th, 2011
10:26 pm
All of these coaches including Mark Richt should be fired immediately. Any of the players involved should be disqualified from competing in collegiate sports for life. Post-season bans should also be imposed for two seasons effective immediately. These people need to understand that slip-ups like this will not be tolerated. New rules will also be put into effect to ban anyone from competition who parks their scooters in unapproved spaces.
Karl Marx Hitler
NCAA President
Head of NCAA Rules Committee
Bama Fan#2
June 16th, 2011
10:58 pm
These minor infractions are not worth writing about. It must be a
slow news day. RTR
RxDawg
June 17th, 2011
12:03 am
Chip, I just read your DJ interview and I really enjoyed it. Since it didn’t have a comment section I thought I’d come here. Thanks for that. I still believe in DJ and think his knee injury that year was such a butterfly effect.
hawks4life
June 17th, 2011
12:09 am
big tech fan, and loves to take shots at UGA, but this is just stupid, there are bigger problems the NCAA needs to spend their time on.
Dawg Fans for Anthony Weiner
June 17th, 2011
12:14 am
Texting is important to the success of our program.
KR
June 17th, 2011
12:45 am
I guess this is what passes for college football news in the summer.
So how does the father of a recruit get Mark Richt’s cell phone number to send him a text in the first place? If communications with the head coach are restricted, it seems to me that a simple way of avoiding the problem is to guard the coach’s cell phone number like it’s classified information. Give the parents the number for the recruiting assistant, but not the head coach.
Don D
June 17th, 2011
4:10 am
Coach Ritch can’t use a Blackberry? What a crock. My 9 year old grandson knows how it works. Keep it up…..
OK
June 17th, 2011
5:09 am
Need to go the Au way. Pay for play.
William
June 17th, 2011
5:54 am
This just in: Georgia Tech will not be allowed to play in a BCS Bowl game this year. No, not any NCAA infractions. Just won’t be good enough to be invited to play in one.
It Ain't Rocket Science
June 17th, 2011
6:55 am
DAWGHATER,
You are obsessed with UGA and it is killing you. You are one of those people who has a borderline mental disease due to that hatred. It is usually associated deep down with an envy fetish of men in tight pants and pads. You hope they get arrested as secretly you also have a prison fetish associated with this as well, where you fantasize you are in a confined space with big strong men. You need to see a doctor.
gt
June 17th, 2011
7:50 am
Alumni participation in recruiting is the real violation of Georgia. Richt doesn’t need to call anyone, except his ex players who in many cases have more salesmanship than he does. David Pollack comes to mind.
I guess the NCAA figures it is a wash. Richt can recruit, or the school by tradition brings em in, but can’t coach, why worry about violations. Save their investigators for someone like Ohio State that is not only cheating but winning?
Jborodawg
June 17th, 2011
8:53 am
I just hope military generals and others with launch codes and stuff don’t use Blackberrys.
“…General Hank ‘Tank’ Franks self-reported yesterday that he pocket launched a Predator drone attack on an elementary school in Kabul. The Dept of the Army reported the incident to the Dept of Defense and self-imposed a thirty day moratorium on Predator flights in and around Kabul. An investigation by Reuters of DoD records shows that the Army admitted three such Predator launches in the past three weeks. In a press release, the Office of Launch Codes Authorization Compliance reports that they have increased training for all end-users…”
Rob
June 17th, 2011
8:59 am
Sounds like Georgia needs to hire coaches with smaller buts…
KevinM
June 17th, 2011
9:02 am
As long as CMR was driving and texting, I’m okay with a little pocket texting….just don’t have it preloaded next time.
Slap!
DawginLex
June 17th, 2011
9:31 am
Hey Bama fans,
Lots of talk going on about how Kentucky had to bow down to the NCAA and admit that celebrating Calipari’s 500th win was wrong since he vacated 33 wins.
Some UK fans and now some talking heads are saying if it applies to Calipari, it applies to Saban and others. Bama media guide apparently counts the 2007 season wins for Saban even though they were vacated.
Stay tuned.
Later Tater
June 17th, 2011
9:36 am
While Mark Richt send Pocket texts, Paul Johnson plays Pocket Pool.
DawginLex
June 17th, 2011
9:54 am
9:49 am
Nice try TROLL BOY
How old are you 5?
DawginLex
June 17th, 2011
10:00 am
Thanks Chip for eliminating my impostor.
It Ain't Rocket Science
June 17th, 2011
10:28 am
GT,
CMR in your estimation may not be able to coach, but his record against GT is pretty admirable. Guess he has enough ability to beat you all, so I am not sure you are in a position to rate his coaching ability. The record speaks for itself.
hmmmmmmmm
June 17th, 2011
1:23 pm
Funny how these secondary violations only seem to occur with high rated prospects. How do you accidently send a text let alone two? Why does Mr. Jenkins have CMR’s cell number and feel comfortable texting the head coach himself instead of contacting the athletic department? This screams of diversion. UGA is telling the NCAA to look right while the really interesting things are to the left.
zincc
June 17th, 2011
3:19 pm
IT AIN”T ROCKET SCIENCE,
I’m not saying I’m mistake free, I’m making the point that IF these people are so smart, they should be able to work a phone. Nothing more. And, so you’ll know, no I haven’t sent an inadvertent text!
Canadadawg
June 17th, 2011
4:05 pm
NCAA needs to be blown up and rebuilt.
Don
June 17th, 2011
4:17 pm
What does this say about the NCAA and its rules and compliance? Were they inadvertent? The point is, we have coaches at major institutions breaking rules and lying about it. We have a governing authority that is too chicken $hit to enforce its own rules. And they don’t want to confront the BCS about a playoff system? Excuse me? And we wonder why our kids learn the wrong lessons. The wrong grown-ups are teaching them, I think. Just a thought…
Nolesbaby
June 17th, 2011
4:31 pm
FSU rules!!!!!!
Jborodawg
June 17th, 2011
5:02 pm
RE: Don…What does this say about the NCAA and its rules and compliance? …”
What it says is that the NCAA rule book is nearly as thick as the fed tax code and nearly as complicated. You can “…text____between____and____; but only on____AND only if______and_____, notwithstanding_____…”
Jim Tressel
June 17th, 2011
5:46 pm
I’ll get on it ASAP.
bigdawg
June 17th, 2011
5:52 pm
Stop boo-hooing about OSU! One day soon the FBS schools will grow a spine, tell the NCAA to pound sand and set up their own league. Then, the NCAA can spend it’s time penalizing Dartmouth and William and Mary!
It Ain't Rocket Science
June 17th, 2011
7:32 pm
ZINCC,
And you haven’t coached a major college football program either, so what is the point. He made a mistake. Do you know if at that moment, he might have been just busy and hit the button by mistake. Things like that happen. I am sure you feel that never having made an inadvertent text message makes you proud. I hope that is not by any means the high point of your life. You really need to stop looking for every little thing to criticize CMR for. He and his assistants are pretty busy guys, and since he self reported it, I doubt seriously he did it intentioanlly. I am sure he knows how to use a blackberry.
Greg
June 17th, 2011
10:08 pm
I really hope GA has a good year and meets Bama in the SEC championship. CMR is a class guy.
Dirty Dawg
June 18th, 2011
9:45 am
I wonder, are there UGA fans lurking around Bama, Gator, Auburn, Tenn, SC, Tech, et.al., sites and stories looking for something to criticize? Are the Richt-bashers ‘really’ Georgia fans that think they actually know more than the coaching staff and that are wiling to openly criticize the program and its leaders for all to see, or are they just more ‘trolls’ that have decided that the more negative crap they can spew the more the ‘media-types’ will fall for it and actually help put CMR on that, so-called, ‘hot-seat’ – or at least help turn up the heat under it just to watch him, and us, squirm? Who are you guys and do you have another life?
As for ‘pocket-calls’, I know a reasonable amount about using cell-phones and have made plenty…has nothing to do with knowing how not to, just in taking the time to ‘lock’ the keys.
While I’m at it, does the presence of Erin Andrews on ESPU’s college football shows represent a promotion for her? If it is they should have given her better stuff to talk about and better writers, cause she ’sucks’ at it….of course the obligatory, in-depth, look at Will Muschump at her alma-mammy was a given…wonder if she asked him if he ever ‘guaranteed’ a victory over Oklahoma to Texas fans? – doubt it…and, in fact, did she ask him what when wrong last year with his defense? Oh well, he’s a Gator now so he’s got to ‘go all in’ for that ‘princely salary’ they’re paying him. Of course her treatment of this incident – or at least the ‘teasing of it’, was predictable in her trying and make Mark Richt and Georgia look, at the least, foolish. I’ve often wondered why her daddy didn’t put her over his knee when she first suggested that she wanted to go to Florida – he played at Georgia ya’ know…and I’ll never forget the time Georgia was playing in the finals of the College World Series and she wore a Florida-blue outfit the entire time over the several days she covered the event, and particularly when she was in the Georgia dugout….bet she got a kick out of that….point being, with her on that show you can count on Georgia not getting cut much slack…she probably has it written in her contract that she can bash Georgia unabashedly.
Mr. SEC
June 18th, 2011
10:14 am
This is a great example why America’s economy is failing! Groups of people who do not have anything else to do but to make a big deal out of BS! These people need to get a life; really a text message? Money transfers I can see, but a text message of this nature is stupid! Bur knowing that it is UGA, they will be held to only 1 football scholarship next year!
It Ain't Rocket Science
June 18th, 2011
10:34 am
Dirty Dwg,
Go over to AL.com and go on their blogs and you will not see many folks outside the Alabama schools, on them. It would be hard to post anyway, with Auburn and Alabama cutting into each other so bad. Magnify the tech. and UGA blogs, for nastiness at each other about ten times, and then you have the Auburn and Alabama discourse. I get a kick out of reading their blogs. It appears their rivalry is truly one of the more passionate ones in college football.
Mike Bobo 17 INT
June 18th, 2011
4:33 pm
Bill King and the AJC are chickensh#ts for not allowing me to provide my insightful criticism of the UGA program, which is tanked and an embarassment ot state of Georgia. The same paper that screams freedom of speech allows columnists to block users for criticizing this horrible program.
Fine, bury your heads in the sand as all most major media outlets laugh at this horrible/overrated program.
Mike Bobo 17 INT
June 18th, 2011
4:55 pm
The scores will tell.
B Goldberg DGD
June 18th, 2011
5:25 pm
I am 24 and the son of a season ticket holder south corner endzone club level and a graduate of 82….. can we please just get back to winning im so fnnn sick of the trollssssssss. my thoughts……..
i like richt i really do… however i love my progrm anough though if he cant straightin us out then we need to git r done. im really rooting for richt i promise i am , i just want the best for our program…im sick of being the middle of the pact . we are a top 5 program and should be every yr. i hope we get right this yr . nothing els more to say othr than i cant explain how i felt after the bowl game. i date a girl who goes to gay ass ucf . yea feel my pain. seriously richt wake the f**** upp Ilove u though go damn dawgs
ugab
June 18th, 2011
11:31 pm
How many time did MR and his nc teams w fsu
SuperDoggie
June 19th, 2011
2:09 am
The only thing our guys do wrong is on accident and our rivals paid players 180k and evevryone knows and it HAS BEEN PROVEN FOR A FACT!!!!!!!!!!! The facts are in! Why is this happening?
Buzz 2010
June 19th, 2011
6:36 am
Clarke county’s finest ………………