Pour one out for Oklahoma State. The men’s basketball program at that school has earned a historic distinction—a dubious, thankless, unfair one. The Cowboys are the last high-profile team that earned a postseason ban from the NCAA for rules violations, and quite likely will be the last to serve that penalty.
That ban was handed down in June 2020, then upheld on appeal in ’21. Since then, all manner of renegades and con artists have had their day in NCAA infractions court and come away with something less than the ultimate sanction that was bestowed upon Oklahoma State. Times have changed, abruptly, and the Pokes had the misfortune of being on the wrong side of that shift.
The latest beneficiary of a kinder, gentler NCAA is Tennessee football. It was cited Friday by the association’s Committee on Infractions as having committed “hundreds” of violations in a case that it labeled “one of the worst the COI has seen.” The then head coach, Jeremy Pruitt, personally paid recruits and their families. Several former assistants and other staffers were involved in brazen violations as well. The Volunteers were a veritable rule-breaking factory, seemingly the only thing Pruitt was good at while going 16–19 in Knoxville.
