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NCAA denies missing deadline in Donnie Tyndall appeal

Donnie Tyndall

FILE - In this Monday, Nov. 3, 2014 file photo, Tennessee head coach Donnie Tyndall in the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against Pikeville in Knoxville, Tenn. The NCAA says Southern Mississippi’s men’s basketball program and former coach Donnie Tyndall have committed multiple violations, including arranging fraudulent academic credit, impermissible financial aid and obstructing the governing body’s investigation, Friday, July 24, 2015. (AP Photo/Wade Payne, File)

AP

Former Tennessee and Southern Miss head coach Donnie Tyndall is putting up as much of a fight as he can against the NCAA as he tries to get his likely career-ending 10-year show-cause penalty reduced.

On Wednesday, he asserted that the NCAA had missed a deadline in responding to an appeal that he had filed. The original deadline to respond was July 5th, but that was pushed back to July 19th at 5 p.m., this past Tuesday. According to Tyndall, the NCAA blew right past that.

But according to an NCAA spokesperson, there’s no truth to that statement.

Tyndall also went after a change in the NCAA bylaws regarding the use of immunity in investigations. The crux of his argument in his appeal is that the NCAA ignored all of the evidence and witnesses supporting his case and, instead, listened to the one person that they gave immunity too, former assistant Adam Howard.

“Friday, at 6:10 p.m. they released some new bylaws, obviously so no one would read it on a Friday evening, that they had new rules in immunity cases,” Tyndall said during a radio interview Tuesday night on WLXG in Lexington, Ky, and transcribed by the Knoxville News-Sentinel. “Basically everything they did wrong in my case, that allowed them to give Adam Howard immunity, they’ve now changed the bylaws and rules that if it ever happens again, then what they had done with me is technically illegal.”

The NCAA, in response, told the KNS that there has been “no material change” to the rule.

Tyndall is going to fight this thing to the death, it seems. But given the level of academic cheating that happened under his watch and the NCAA’s belief that he lied to them about it, I find it hard to believe that his penalty is going to be rescinded.