LIU athletics hit with 3-year probation after NCAA finds student-athlete violations

Long Island University was placed on a three-year probation Monday after an NCAA investigation found the school allowed more than 1,000 noncertified student-athletes to compete or practice over a four-year period.

The investigation, which took place during the 2020-21 through 2023-24 academic years, said LIU improperly certified the student-athletes in more than 30 sports, according to an online document on the NCAA website.

The student-athletes did not meet initial eligibility requirements and did not complete NCAA required forms such as student-athlete statements and drug testing consent forms. The NCAA report said the merger of the LIU Brooklyn and LIU Post athletic departments in the 2019-20 academic year was a major factor that led to the violations.

LIU submitted a self-report of its findings to the NCAA in July 2024, according to the report. In addition to the three-year probation, the NCAA issued a $30,000 fine plus 3% of the budgets for the four highest budgeted sport programs — which were not revealed in the report — involved in the violations. The NCAA also issued a two-week recruiting ban during the first year of probation for all programs involved, and participation in external review and volunteering for NCAA Academic Performance Program reviews.

No postseason or television bans are part of the punishment, and financial aid is not impacted. The probation period runs through May 3, 2029.

B. David Ridpath, a professor of sports business at Ohio University, told Newsday the violations are serious but the penalties are not too severe.

“I just don't see anything that's real devastating here,"  said Ridpath, an expert on NCAA governance.

LIU said in a statement to Newsday that no student-athletes or teams from the 2024-25 or 2025-26 seasons are impacted by the investigation. Records and titles from those seasons will remain intact, including the men's basketball team's trip to the NCAA Tournament in March.

“Long Island University identified these eligibility certification matters through its compliance systems during a routine, university-wide review and promptly self-reported them to the NCAA,” a university spokesman said in a statement to Newsday. “The issues date back several years and occurred during a period of operational disruption amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The NCAA recognized the University’s collaborative approach throughout the review, and we worked closely with the NCAA while fully cooperating at every stage of the process."

The report stated that initial eligibility certifications for 240 LIU student-athletes were not completed before they practiced, including 176 who “competed impermissibly and/or received actual and necessary expenses while ineligible or not certified.” Another 658 student-athletes competed and 111 practiced without completing their required forms.

"By NCAA rules, it is still serious if players aren't properly certified eligible when they compete," Ridpath said. He added that LIU self-reporting the violations helped its case.

"You look at the penalties, there's no scholarship restrictions, which the NCAA is kind of doing away with anyway," he said. "So they've got monetary fines and you have to vacate records. ... It was just simply — and I don't want to minimize it — but it was a lack of administrative oversight. But the university should have known better."

According to the NCAA report, the merger of LIU Brooklyn and LIU Post meant “a single compliance staff member was responsible for a 35 sport program athletics department.” The report continued to mention that the teams being split between the Brooklyn and Post campuses “led to communication inefficiencies between coaching staffs and compliance related to which student-athletes were on each squad.”

LIU also had no “formal process established to certify initial eligibility or check that certifications were accurate” and “there were no areas outside of athletics that were included in verifying the initial eligibility status of student-athletes,” according to the report.

“When you're talking about a campus merger and only one person – that was probably their biggest mistake, just not having enough oversight, and things can fall through the cracks relatively quickly," Ridpath said. "It doesn't appear to me that there was anything on LIU’s behalf that they were trying to circumvent the rules to gain a competitive advantage.”

The report said that team and individual records in sports in which the ineligible players competed over the four-year period will be vacated. Those sports include baseball, football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, men’s golf, men’s soccer, softball, men’s indoor and outfield track and field, women’s indoor and outdoor track and field, and women’s volleyball.

LIU had plenty of athletic achievements this academic year that will remain in its record books.

The Sharks’ men’s basketball team, which plays its home games in Brooklyn, won this year’s Northeast Conference regular-season and tournament titles and made its first NCAA Tournament appearance since the Post and Brooklyn athletic departments combined. Its football team, which plays its home games in Brookville and competes at the FCS level (formerly Division I-AA), notched its first win over an FBS opponent last Sept. 6, a 28-23 win at Eastern Michigan. Its softball team clinched its second consecutive NEC regular-season title Sunday.

Stony Brook University was dealt a similar three-year probation in April 2005 after an NCAA report revealed it was poorly prepared for its move to Division I. Violations occurred regarding the certification of 53 athletes during the 1999-2000 and 2000-01 academic years, the first two during Stony Brook’s jump from Division III to Division I. That case, however, resulted in the reduction of a total of 12 1/2 scholarships in 10 sports, including basketball, football and baseball, over the next two academic years.