The Texas A&M NCAA brouhaha has a connection to the Tennessee football program. And, not surprisingly, UT had a public response.
Thursday afternoon, the NCAA announced it had sanctioned the Texas A&M football program and Jimbo Fisher over a pair of minor violations committed between January 2018 and February 2019. Among other penalties, the Aggies were placed on probation for a year. Fisher, meanwhile, was given a six-month show-cause. An unnamed former A&M assistant was also given a six-month show-cause in connection to a recruiting violation involving Fisher.
While the assistant wasn’t named by the NCAA, it didn’t take much to figure out it was Jay Graham.
In January of this year, Graham was named as the running backs coach for Tennessee football. The two years prior to that, though, Graham served as the running backs coach at Texas A&M. It was during that stint in College Station that Graham, along with Fisher, made impermissible contact with a high school recruit. That led to Graham being slapped with the show-cause by the NCAA.
That said, his new employer was prepared for it.
“During the process of hiring Coach Jay Graham, we were made aware of the circumstances at his previous institution, and we vetted it thoroughly in accordance with NCAA and SEC bylaws,” UT said in a statement. “We established and maintain extremely high confidence in Coach Graham’s commitment to compliance and are proud to have him on our staff.”
The show-cause will have an impact on the recruiting availability of Graham this fall, as laid out by the NCAA:
The terms of the show-cause order include a previously served nine-day ban on phone calls, emails or texts with prospects in January 2020; a reduction in off-campus recruiting contact days by three for the December 2019 through January 2020 contact period; a ban on all off-campus recruiting activities for the fall 2020 contact period; and additional one-on-one rules education.
