The Colorado athletic department decided to stop livestreaming its weekly coaches show with Deion Sanders and also removed two episodes of the show from YouTube last fall after the name of a prominent football recruit was mentioned on it in violation of NCAA rules, according to documents obtained by USA TODAY Sports.
This minor violation happened in November, when the name of quarterback recruit Julian “JuJu” Lewis came up before he signed with Colorado Dec. 4. According to NCAA rules, schools generally may not publicize or comment on a recruit before officially signing that recruit. Colorado self-reported this violation and decided to impose corrective measures as a result, including additional rules education for Sanders, the head coach, and a reduction of four recruiting-person days in the spring 2025 contact period.
The school also agreed to “implement new institutional controls on the football weekly coaches show,” according to school’s report on the matter. “The content will no longer be livestreamed. External relations will therefore be able to review and edit content that could be construed as impermissible publicity of (recruits).”
This was among at least six self-reported infractions in the Colorado football program that were processed in 2024, according to records obtained by USA TODAY Sports. Before that, Colorado processed at least 11 other self-reported minor violations in the first year under Sanders since his hiring in December 2022.
To be clear, these types of minor violations are fairly common in college sports and are not considered major issues unless they become part of a bigger pattern or are not reported by the school after discovering them. For example, Georgia and Ohio State also each self-reported four minor violations in their football programs during various periods in 2023-24.
What exactly happened in the Julian Lewis case?
Lewis did nothing wrong. His eligibility at Colorado was not affected. But after he publicly committed to Colorado on Nov. 21, his name came up twice on Sanders’ weekly show, which is produced by the school on a public YouTube channel.
This would have been OK if Lewis had officially signed with CU before that. The problem was he hadn’t signed yet and wasn’t allowed to sign until Dec. 4, the first day of the early signing period.
The first mention came on the day that Lewis announced his commitment to Colorado on Nov. 21. The show’s host, Mark Johnson, referenced this big news on the show but didn’t mention Lewis’ name. He asked Sanders how he gets involved with communicating with recruits and their families.
Sanders then gave an example of how he recruited Lewis.
“Hey, get JuJu on the phone and get his pop on the phone,” Sanders said as an example. “See if his dad want to come down and just sit down and chop it up with me.’
‘He sat in my office I think a few weeks ago for a couple hours,’ Deion Sanders said on the show about the father. ‘I said, `C,mon, give it all to me because I know you’ve got a bunch of questions on your mind. Let’s go.’ And we did that. And he walked away feeling really comfortable about where we’re headed.’
`Pulled off YouTube’
The show was taken off YouTube a few hours later after the school noticed “the impermissible publicity” of the unsigned recruit.
Six days later, the same coaches show went live again with Sanders and a different host filling in for Johnson. That host is not a school employee and simply mentioned Lewis when asking Sanders about preparation for a bowl game – a relevant question for any journalist to ask. Sanders didn’t even say Lewis’ name this time in response after a university official immediately interrupted the show to change the subject.
Yet it was still deemed to be impermissible since Lewis was mentioned on the school’s coaches show.
“This time the show was pulled off YouTube within less than an hour,” the school’s report on the matter states. The report states that both incidents were unintentional and “not a direct effort to gain any recruiting advantage.” It also noted that Sanders and Johnson “have both received past rules education about recruiting publicity.”
Self-reporting and correcting such violations is considered a sign of diligence and integrity in the NCAA, as opposed to sweeping them under the rug to avoid trouble. The school didn’t immediately provide additional comment but said in a similar story last year that it was committed to complying with NCAA regulations and that it takes ‘all infractions seriously, regardless of the severity.’
Why was this a violation of NCAA rules?
Like many other NCAA rules, the gag order on unsigned recruits was put in place by member schools for a reason even if it seems trivial. It makes life easier for all NCAA coaches, because without it, they’d feel constant pressure to publicly hype up every recruit they might want to sign.
“The NCAA’s recruiting publicity bylaws were written with the intent of keeping the recruiting process private between university staff and prospective student-athletes, in large part to both help minimize intrusion into prospective student-athletes’ lives and to keep the recruiting environment equitable,” said Joshua Lens, an associate professor at Iowa who previously worked in NCAA rules compliance at Baylor.
Variations of this NCAA rule have been around for decades, according to NCAA records. In 1972, the NCAA reprimanded St. John’s University after its athletic department arranged a press luncheon to announce the commitment of two recruits. In 1982, the NCAA reprimanded West Virginia when its basketball coach participated in a press conference conducted by a recruit to announce his commitment to the program.
What were other Colorado football violations?
The other NCAA reports obtained by USA TODAY Sports all involved minor violations of technical rules, including some that originated in 2023 but apparently didn’t get finally processed until 2024.
In one case, a recruit signed with Colorado on Dec. 20, 2023, and was vacationing in Florida when he met up with an active Colorado player who was in Florida at the time. The active Colorado player’s brother was there, too, and had contact with the same recruit on Dec. 22.
But because the contact came during the NCAA’s recruiting “dead period,” and because this brother is considered a “representative of Colorado’s athletic interests,” this contact was deemed to be a minor violation. As a result, the schools said it would provide rules education and reduce recruiting-person days by two.
The school’s report stated the brother believed that the contact was permissible because he is not on the football staff and not recruiting for Colorado.
In another incident that originated in September 2023, a recruit was taken to a go-karting event for entertainment, which cost $67. But according to NCAA rule 13.6.7.4, an institution may provide only up to $60 per person to entertain a prospective student-athlete. To resolve this $7 transgression, the recruit was declared ineligible for competition until repayment was made to a charity.
“Rules education on entertainment during official visits was provided to the football recruiting staff, and the entire football staff,” the school’s report states.
Other minor violations involved prospective recruits entering a premium seating area at a football game when they shouldn’t have and the impermissible observation of a contact drill by a strength and conditioning coach.
None resulted in serious penalties.
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com