South Carolina Football Rival Self-Reports Violations

According to The State newspaper of South Carolina, Clemson University’s Athletics Department has self-reported 11 violations regarding recruits and student-athletes during the 2022 calendar year. South Carolina football’s biggest rival self-reported a similar list of 13 violations that were made public several years ago regarding the 2018-2019 athletic seasons. These 11 new violations are all considered “minor” in nature. The State received this information by making a request for the information that is, technically, public record due to the school’s public funding.

The State’s report states that eight of the violations and all four of those involving the football program were violations relating to recruiting future athletes to the school. One of the violations involved a Clemson assistant football coach illegally contacting a recruit by calling him during a time that is supposed to be a recruiting dead period. This resulted in the football program being unable to contact this recruit for two recruiting contact periods.

The State reports that the other recruiting violations also involved impermissible contact with prospective student-athletes, including using Twitter direct messaging and other “electronic communication” to talk with recruits during recruiting dead periods and having current football participate in a group recruiting activity during an off-day. The violations were all considered to be “Level-III” in nature and provided minimal impermissible benefits to the school, athletes, or recruits. No other NCAA action was taken against the Clemson football program for their violations.

The State also added that Clemson had previously reported 21 violations during the 2021 and 2022 calendar years. No coaches, players, or recruits have had their names released as part of Clemson’s reporting, as specific names and other pieces of information were redacted from the released documents.

These violations, according to The State, bring Clemson’s total to 32 self-reported violations during the last two years. The University of South Carolina’s Athletics Department self-reported 24 total NCAA infractions during the same time period.