Coach Deion Sanders and his Colorado football program got dinged for 11 minor NCAA violations since his hiring in December 2022, including some that show how the prolific use of social media by a coach sometimes can get tripped up by the 452-page NCAA rulebook.
USA TODAY Sports obtained documentation of the violations, all of which were self-reported by the university to the NCAA and none of which risked any serious penalties.
To be clear, such minor violations are common in virtually every major college athletic department, such as at Ohio State, which reported two minor violations in football in 2022-23, and Alabama, which self-reported nine minor violations that same year, including none in football. Self-reporting them is considered a positive sign of diligence and integrity, as opposed to not reporting them at all to avoid scrutiny. All appear to be inadvertent violations of an NCAA rulebook that can be highly complex.
In this case, the violations under Sanders provide a window into how his frequent activity on social media sometimes tested technical bylaws. Colorado’s transfer-heavy recruiting approach under Sanders also clashed at times with NCAA regulations.
In one case, a security breakdown led to an impermissible “gameday simulation” for a recruit, followed by a write-up from the NCAA that said “future similar violations may result in more significant penalties including suspension of the head coach from a contest.
