Kansas University expects to take a sizable travel party – roughly a dozen officials – Sunday to Baltimore for its hearing with the NCAA Committee on Infractions.
The most notable names appearing include Chancellor Robert Hemenway, athletic director Lew Perkins, men’s basketball coach Bill Self and football coach Mark Mangino.
Others scheduled to attend include Overland Park attorney Rick Evrard and his associate, associate athletic directors Jim Marchiony, Theresa Becker and Paul Buskirk, women’s basketball coach Bonnie Henrickson, faculty representative Don Green and a few others.
In addition, former KU football graduate assistant John Papuchis is expected to be present with legal counsel to give his side of the story. An unnamed football GA in 2003 is cited in the self-report as having committed academic fraud inside the football program in an attempt to get junior-college transfers eligible for the ’03 season.
Papuchis left KU after the 2003 season and spent the next two years as an intern at Louisiana State.
Evrard said KU would have a bigger contingent than most because of turnover that has occurred since the violations were committed.
“One of the things the committee has done in the recent past is try to get a perspective of what’s happened at the institution,” Evrard said. “Sometimes, for example in this case, you have some transition, and people that were not necessarily here in the period of time that this investigation encompasses. They would like to get somebody from the institution who was there the whole time. So I think they invited more people than they normally would have.”
Sunday’s hearing will start at 8:30 a.m. inside the Tremont Plaza Hotel in downtown Baltimore. The NCAA Committee on Infractions has set aside the entire day to hear KU’s case, though the actual length of the hearing is unknown and unpredictable.
The KU officials all will plead their case to an eight-member panel of the Committee on Infractions. According to Evrard, two committee members have recused themselves from the hearing because of minor ties – such as a relative attending the school – to Kansas.
Sunday’s hearing will not be followed with any immediate response from the committee. No official word from the NCAA, including any additional penalties, is expected to be released for several more weeks.
KU already self-imposed penalties for the violations it unearthed in an internal investigation last year.
