The NCAA on Tuesday announced that the University of Florida football program had been found in violation of the organization's recruiting rules.
In its statement, not only did the NCAA cite Florida's transgressions regarding “contact rules” with prospective student-athletes, but it also singled out coach Dan Mullen as “the head coach did not promote an atmosphere of compliance,” according to an agreement that the NCAA released in conjunction with the NCAA's Division I Committee on Infractions.
The NCAA release read, in part, the following:
The university, the head football coach, an assistant coach and NCAA enforcement staff agreed that the assistant coach and head coach had impermissible in-person contact with a prospect when they met with a prospect’s high school coach while the prospect was in the room. At that meeting, the Florida coaches expressed an interest in recruiting the prospect. Leading up to that visit, the head coach sent the prospect texts about his upcoming visit to the high school and his interest in recruiting the prospect. NCAA rules were violated because off-campus recruiting contacts are not allowed until after a football prospect’s junior year of high school. The violations were Level II.
The NCAA document went on to note that Florida's head coach and others had impermissible contact with a whopping 127 prospects when seven teams visited the Gainesville, Florida, campus and toured the Gators' athletics facilities en route to an unspecified tournament the teams were competing in Tampa.
"As head coach of the Florida Gators, promoting an atmosphere of compliance within our program is important to me," Mullen said in a statement. "Following the rules and being committed to doing things the right way is part of my history as a coach, at all levels, and I regret we didn't do things the right way in this situation.
"Even though this is an isolated matter, I'm still disappointed in the violations outlined in this report. We're going to learn from our mistakes and I'm confident this won't happen again. Most importantly, we'll keep working for the benefit of our student-athletes to make our program one our fans and University can be proud of."
Both parties, according to the NCAA, used the negotiating adjudication process – Florida and the NCAA agree to use a third-party; the findings are then not able to be contested.
Among the Gators' penalties for these infractions are the following: a $5,000 fine, one-year probationary period and fall evaluations sliced in half, from 41 to 21, were enacted in 2019; Mullen received a one-year show-cause penalty and was prohibited from all off-campus recruiting in 2020 (note: because of the COVID-19 pandemic, no coaches were permitted off-campus recruiting this fall), as well as a four-day ban for Mullen in fall 2021; the Gators are amidst a probationary period that precludes them from recruiting an unnamed Seattle high school; and a seven-day off-campus recruiting ban for the entire Gators' coaching staff in the upcoming spring 2021 evaluation period.
The NCAA release can be found here in its entirety.