A-10 commissioner: NCAA penalties against UMass unfortunate

The NCAA is stripping Massachusetts of victories in men’s basketball and women’s tennis for overpaying 12 athletes about $9,100 in financial aid over three years, prompting criticism of the penalty from the Atlantic 10 Conference commissioner.

The NCAA announced Friday the Committee on Infractions had imposed a two-year probation on UMass that will end October 2022 in addition to vacating results involving athletes who received what were determined to be a total of 13 inappropriate payments.

The school will also pay a self-imposed fine of $5,000.

UMass plans to appeal the committee's decision to vacate results from 2014-17 that include 59 basketball wins and an Atlantic 10 Conference championship in women’s tennis.

A-10 Commissioner Bernadette McGlade and UMass athletic director Ryan Bamford both took issue with the vacation penalty for what the COI conceded was a “misunderstanding,” according to the NCAA’s news release.

McGlade said the decision was “unfortunate.”

“I think there's a misappropriation and maybe we are at a point in time where the association (NCAA) needs to have a reset, quite frankly,” McGlade said. “To have a set of student-athletes that had no involvement in a mistake/violation that has been acknowledged ... and yet to penalize them by the vacation of contests seems inordinately punitive and not in the spirit of what we do as an association.”

Bamford referred to the violations as mistakes that were “inadvertent and unintentional.”

Public criticism of a COI decision and NCAA enforcement by college administrators has become common in recent years. In cases involving football, both Notre Dame and Missouri loudly complained their cooperation with the NCAA and proactive compliance led to harsh penalties for violations...