Cal Gets Minor Basketball Penalty

After months of investigation and legal haggling, the University of California received a minor penalty by the NCAA for its recruitment of Shareef Abdur-Rahim, a high school basketball star from Georgia who was one of the country’s top recruits last season.

Abdur-Rahim, a freshman forward this year, received no penalty, but the basketball program lost two of 12 possible official recruiting visits for next season because Coach Todd Bozeman interacted with a Cal alumnus who helped Abdur-Rahim during the recruiting process.

The penalty is insignificant for Cal, which normally uses only about six official visits. Its scholarship totals are unaffected.

“It [the case] was so important, that’s why we took this on so vigorously,” said John Kasser, Cal’s athletic director, referring to his battle with the NCAA.

“It was important to get all of these basketball rumors and innuendoes behind us once and for all because I don’t think there has been a basketball program scrutinized more than us and all they [NCAA] came out with was a secondary violation and, besides that, it was inadvertent.”

This was a case without a known precedent for the NCAA Infractions Committee. It centered around a friendship between Abdur-Rahim and Hashim Ali Alauddeen, a Cal alumnus and graduate student, who met through basketball but became close because of their shared Muslim beliefs. The NCAA had to determine whether Alauddeen acted on Abdur-Rahim’s behalf as a fellow Muslim or as a Cal booster.

The committee found that Alauddeen acted on his own when he befriended Abdur-Rahim but became a Cal representative when he accompanied the prospect from his home outside Atlanta to Berkeley and met with Bozeman during an unofficial visit in September 1994.

It is against NCAA rules for a school’s representative to assist in the recruitment of a student athlete, but the committee ruled that Bozeman’s role was inadvertent even though he knew that Alauddeen would accompany Abdur-Rahim on the visit and subsequently met with them on campus.

“If the graduate student and the young man had come on their own, visited the campus and the coach and his staff had played no part, the graduate student would not have become a representative,” said David Swank, who chaired the committee.

But the committee ruled that the violations were limited.

“This was a major infractions case, but, after considering all the submissions and evidence, the committee issued one secondary violation of NCAA rules.”

The committee found no wrongdoing by Abdur-Rahim, whose mother tried to call the NCAA before the weekend visit to make certain there was no violation but found the office closed. As a formality, Abdur-Rahim will be declared ineligible by Cal, which was expected to apply for and receive his immediate reinstatement.