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| | Wednesday, November 3 | |||||
| NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Four Tennessee football players suspended last week as part of an academic fraud investigation by the school have been cleared to
play in Saturday's game against Auburn, school president J. Wade
Gilley said Friday.
Gilley said a preliminary investigation has not turned up evidence to show that the athletes did anything wrong as it related to possible plagiarized papers. "The investigation cleared all the players," Gilley said.In addition to the four redshirt freshmen, starting center Spencer Riley was cleared by the school of wrongdoing for a paper that was allegedly co-written by an athletic department employee when he was a freshman. Riley, whose English paper in 1995 had sparked English Department concerns about widespread plagiarism in the academic services unit of the athletic department, had not been suspended by Tennessee. The school has not yet announced a decision on whether there was a lack of institutional control for failing to investigate last fall when administrators in the athletic department were made aware of potential NCAA violations by a staff member. NCAA rules require that schools follow institutional procedures in checking out and reporting all possible violations. Robin Wright, former coordinator of academic programs in the Tennessee athletic department, had alerted her boss, Gerry Dickey, and his boss, Carmen Tegano, in email messages and memos to possible incidents related to plagiarism involving at least five players and four tutors, according to documents obtained by ESPN.com. The four players suspended last week by Tennessee were all redshirt freshmen: Leonard Scott, Reggie Ridley, Keyon Whiteside and Ryan Rowe. The documents obtained by ESPN.com identify two other football players, a baseball player and a female athlete as possibly having benefited from improper tutoring. Tennessee officials say those two football players and the baseball player have transferred to other schools. One of the football players suspended by Tennessee was not cited in the documents acquired by ESPN.com. The University of Tennessee based its suspensions last week on information that it had received independently. The notes and memos obtained by ESPN.com were not passed on to the school officials in charge of investigating the merit of those claims, according to those officials, NCAA rules compliance officer Malcolm McInnis and NCAA faculty senate representative Carl Asp. Tennessee athletic director Doug Dickey also said he was never made aware of those documents, but should have been. The SEC issued its decision about the players late Thursday, Gilley said, though no statement from the league was released. SEC commissioner Roy Kramer told ESPN.com Friday that the decision related to eligibility of players was made by Tennessee, and that the SEC only served in an advisory capacity.Tennessee is investigating allegations that athletic department tutors did schoolwork for athletes, a possible violation of school honor codes and NCAA rules. The school has not announced when the its final findings will be released.
| ALSO SEE Timeline: Events, allegations and memos related to academic fraud
Alleged academic fraud spurs Vols probe
Tennessee AD admits procedure wasn't followed
Forfeiting national title unlikely result of probe of Tennessee
Tennessee center's paper sparked accusations of academic fraud
Whistleblower applauds reinstatement of Tennessee players
Vols stripped of athletes-only tutor lab
Tennessee to review athletes' grade changes
Tennessee says probe finds no NCAA violations
Tennessee cites 'differences' in no-violation report
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