ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.
The NCAA put New Mexico’s football program on three years of probation Wednesday and cut five scholarships as punishment for academic violations involving two former assistant coaches.
The sanctions imposed by the NCAA’s infractions committee went beyond the university’s self-imposed penalties, which included two years of probation and fewer scholarship reductions.
New Mexico’s head coach Rocky Long was not accused of any wrongdoing in the case.
The NCAA concluded that the former Lobos assistants in 2004 improperly helped three recruits to obtain fraudulent academic credits through correspondence courses they never completed at Fresno Pacific University, a fully accredited, four-year college in California that also offers online degrees.
In its report, the infractions committee said course registration materials at Fresno Pacific showed the home addresses for the three UNM recruits as the home address in California of a brother of one former assistant. Coaches’ office or cell phone numbers were listed as the recruits’ phone numbers. The recruits admitted to NCAA investigators that they “received no course materials and did no work” but received course credit.
The recruits took courses from a Fresno Pacific instructor who was an acquaintance of one of the former UNM assistants.
