On Thursday morning, the NCAA announced that two Stanford football boosters had provided “impermissible benefits” to former receiver Devon Cajuste back in 2014. Impermissible benefits valued at under $400 included restaurant meals with the landlord’s family, movie tickets with the family and the use of a local vacation home.
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On Wednesday, Jon Wilner of The San Jose Mercury News broke the story of how the Stanford Football and Softball programs were hit with a Level II rules violation penalty levied by the NCAA.
“Stanford University has a proud track record of making substantial contributions to college athletics by supporting exemplary programs for amateur student-athletes”, the university said in a statement.
At first, that sounds pretty serious, but when you see the detailed list of benefits Cajuste received, you might be curious as to how they got to that $3,500 number. The student was suspended one game and asked to repay the worth of the goods and services he had earlier received for free, the school said in a statement posted to the university’s website. “I will have no further comment on this matter”.
In four years with the Cardinal, 1,589 yards and 14 touchdowns on 90 receptions.
Stanford self-imposed a one-game suspension on Cajuste, and he was required to pay the value of the impermissible benefits to charity as a condition of his 2014 reinstatement.
Cajuste was also given a loan by the landlord to buy a bicycle. The incidents, which were internally investigated and reported by Stanford in 2014, were followed with self-imposed penalties and an additional $5000 fine levied by the NCAA.
The university was found guilty of two violations after self-reporting improprieties in 2014. The program was discontinued by the university because of the risk associated with it.
“The NCAA investigation explored whether there was a possibility of other violations”, Stanford said in its statement. “The university also added an additional full-time compliance staff member to Stanford Athletics to increase monitoring and verification of practice hours for all student-athletes, including reviewing practice logs and unannounced observations of practices”.
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In Muir’s statement, “In the spring of 2014, the university began an internal inquiry into the softball program after learning of concerns from student-athletes and parents regarding the management of the program”.
