Kansas basketball: Jayhawks infraction case still being unsolved is an embarrassment to the NCAA

The NCAA has still not solved the Kansas basketball infraction case after years of investigation. It has been utterly embarrassing how the organization has gone about the process.

The Kansas Jayhawks basketball program was charged with five level-one violations in 2019 from the NCAA stemming from an FBI Investigation into college basketball corruption that concluded in 2017.

In an attempt to speed the process up, Kansas basketball decided to self-impose sanctions which included a four-game suspension for Bill Self and Kurtis Townsend to start the 2022 season. KU was one of eight different schools to be investigated in the 2017 FBI investigation and is now the only school that hasn’t received a resolution yet.

Kansas opted to choose an ‘alternative resolution,’ which meant taking the case to the newly founded IARP (Independent Accountability Resolution Process) at the time, which is constructed of attorneys and investigators. The IARP was made specifically to handle the sophisticated FBI college basketball corruption cases.

We are now four years into the IARP’s existence, and there has been minimal progress toward a resolution for the Jayhawks. Meanwhile, other schools have had their resolutions announced.

The IARP was so bad that the NCAA decided to dissolve the organization following the completion of Kansas’ infractions case. It is utterly ridiculous that it has taken close to a half-decade to resolve a case, and it is an embarrassment for the entire NCAA organization. Most of the cases resolved by the IARP have ended with very light penalties (fines and scholarship loss) with no postseason bans — similar to what Kansas self-imposed in 2022.

This half-decade-long witchhunt has hurt Kansas in so many ways — whether that is recruiting or tarnishing Bill Self’s reputation. It seems as if the NCAA made baseless claims without much evidence and expected the IARP to go along with it and punish Kansas to no end.

The NCAA is continuing to turn itself into a laughing stock, and I don’t think they even care. Hopefully, the IARP finally comes to a resolution before the 2023-2024 season begins.

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