Booster disputes possible NCAA violations against Marshall
Marshall’s job scheme for non-qualifiers may extend back to 1990 under former coach Jim Donnan according to a recently filed deposition. But a prominent Marshall booster disputes whether any NCAA violations occurred.
The booster, Huntington, W.Va. businessman Marshall Reynolds, said in a 90-page deposition filed on Friday that Donnan suggested to him that three to four football players per year be given jobs. Reynolds said he believed they were all non-qualifiers and giving jobs to such players would not constitute an NCAA violation.
Marshall was penalized by the NCAA in 2001, in part, for impermissible employment of non-qualifiers from 1996-2000. The earliest violations cited by the NCAA occurred six years before Donnan came to the school in 1990.
“He (Donnan) probably asked me (about jobs) his first year here,” Reynolds is quoted as saying. Further, Reynolds stated that a Marshall “compliance guy” said the practice was “fine … after we got it set up.”
sportsline.com
8/19/08
