Apparently Mike Montgomery and his staff were a wee bit overzealous once they arrived in Berkeley in April 2008. That or they needed to use up their rollover minutes.
Either way, it landed them in the NCAA’s finger wagging department.
Cal was placed on two years probation for making 365 impermissible phone calls back when Montgomery’s staff was getting settled. It could’ve been more, but Cal self-reported the violations and the NCAA decided the calls were the result of neglect rather than “an intentional effort to circumvent the rules.”
“That’s a good thing. When they caught it, then they took the appropriate action of investigating it and determining what violations had occurred,” said Dennis Thomas, MEAC Commissioner and chairman of the infractions committee.
So what’s the difference between what Cal did and say, Kelvin Sampson’s staff at Indiana? Cal didn’t log most of them correctly. A small amount pertained to when and how often recruits can be contacted.
Chalk it up to Montgomery getting back into the college game after leaving Stanford for the NBA in 2004. That’s what the NCAA did.
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