In a decision that was expected but still drew skepticism from faculty members, University of Tennessee president J. Wade Gilley said the school will report no rules violations to the NCAA as a result of its internal probe into allegations of academic fraud involving athletes.

Tennessee has been reviewing possible violations since Sept. 14, when the school first became aware of internal memos by English Department personnel assigned to monitor the tutoring of athletes. The memos, dating back to 1995 and first brought to light Sept. 26 on ESPN.com, allege a pattern of tutors writing and co-writing papers for athletes, primarily football players.

"There's nothing verifiable to precipitate further action," Gilley told the New York Times in Thursday's edition. "We have no evidence that the student athletes or tutors acted improperly. There's no pattern. We are confident we have a very sound system with seasoned people of integrity in place."

The findings stand at odds with the position taken by the school's English Department, which remains concerned about improper tutoring. Earlier this month, in mid-semester, the department decided to revoke an athletes-only tutoring lab in the athletics department.

Gilley's findings also stand in contrast to statements previously made by the school's lead NCAA compliance officials, who said that university procedure was broken last fall because they never received a series of internal staff memos alleging improper tutoring of athletes. NCAA rules require schools to follow institutional procedure in checking out possible rules violations.

On Thursday the Associated Press received a copy of a two-page report on the full investigation, which athletics director Doug Dickey was to mail to the NCAA on Friday.

University investigators working for Tennessee general counsel Beauchamp Brogan talked to more than 20 current and former university employees and eight current or former Tennessee athletes. None was named in the report.

The lead investigator was in-house counsel Ron Leadbetter.

"The result is pretty much what we have always said," Brogan said. "We found no violations of NCAA rules at all. No violation, period. No cover-up. Nothing."

In the report, investigators said they found no evidence a tutor "wrote, typed or otherwise authored a paper" for any athlete in violation of rules. They did find one case in which a tutor typed a paper from an athlete's dictation in "good faith." But the athlete received no credit for it and had to redo the assignment.

"In no instance did a student-athlete identified in the course of this investigation receive an added benefit in violation of NCAA bylaws," Leadbetter wrote.

The report said there was no "cover-up" in violation of NCAA bylaws, but it did find unnamed "athletics department academic support officials" failed to inform Dickey and NCAA compliance officer Malcolm McInnis about "reports of possible plagiarism (and) ... the investigative results" from looking into the earlier charges.

Dickey called that a "mistake" though not so great to break the rules.

"The lack of promptness does not constitute an NCAA violation," he said. However, "a prior reporting of these issues would have possibly avoided this controversy."

Linda Bensel-Meyers, who as director of composition for Tennessee's English Department monitors some of the tutors assigned to work with athletes, questioned whether the report was done in an objective manner.

"I think (Leadbetter) was pressured to contain the issue as much as possible," Bensel-Meyers said. "If there wasn't an outright violation, he wasn't going to go looking for it."

Bensel-Meyers said she became concerned about the motives behind the internal review after a Sept. 14 meeting with Leadbetter. She said she offered to show him evidence of academic improprieties involving a current football player, as well as other athletes, but that he declined to have her forward the relevant memos to him because he told her the 1995 incidents were "too old."

That initial 30-minute meeting was the only time Leadbetter talked to her, other than to ask a quick question by telephone earlier this month, Bensel-Meyers said.

Kirsten Benson, a former athletics department employee who says she witnessed improper tutoring, said she wasn't interviewed at any point by school lawyers. Benson, who previously headed up the English Department tutoring program in the athletics department, had said in the initial ESPN report that players had told her that longtime tutor Ron Payne -- one of the subjects of the Tennessee review -- had improperly "spoon-fed" them answers.

Leadbetter was unavailable for comment. But he was quoted Thursday in the Times as saying, "We spoke with everyone who had useful information, some people multiple times. We talked to anyone who remotely might have had firsthand knowledge of the allegations."

The decision on whether any action could be taken against Tennessee now rests with the NCAA, although the organization does not publicly announce whether or not it is investigating a program.

Brogan said that even though the investigation was conducted in-house "we have to do as thorough a job as possible. We can't sugarcoat our report. We don't answer to ESPN.com or anything like that. But we have to answer to the NCAA."

Brogan said the NCAA "always has the right to accept the report as it is written or to come in and question our findings or to look at whatever we did. So we have to be cognizant of that and ... do the best job that we can."

The Tennessee faculty remains concerned about academic assistance given to athletes. Earlier this month, the university's Faculty Senate voted to set up a five-member subcommittee to review the propriety of the tutoring program, the accommodations given to athletes diagnosed with learning disabilities, and whether grades were changed to keep athletes eligible for competition.

"The only thing anyone can hope for is that the faculty will get behind the idea that education for student-athletes is important," Benson said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.