Antonio Pierce gets NCAA punishment for violations that included taking prospects parents to gentlemans club

Antonio Pierce was handed an eight-year show-cause order over violations that happened during his time as an assistant coach at Arizona State, which included “taking a prospect’s parents to a gentlemen’s club.”The NCAA made the announcement Thursday, finding that Pierce orchestrated a “scheme” to work around recruiting restrictions that had been in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. The punishment doesn’t impact Pierce, who resigned from his position at ASU prior to the 2022 season, unless he attempts to return to coach in college football. Should an NCAA school hire him during the show-cause order, Pierce would be suspended for the first football season in which he would not be allowed any contact with any of the coaches or players.The NCAA order runs until Oct.2, 2032. Pierce, other football staffers and a booster are said to have set up unofficial visits for “roughly one year” during the COVID dead period where staff had “had impermissible recruiting contacts — including tryouts, football facility tours and entertainment — with 35 prospects and their families.”The report continued that the now-Raiders coach is said to have “arranged for or personally provided free meals, apparel, airfare and/or lodging for 27 prospects, often in collaboration with the booster, who was the parent of a then-football student-athlete in the program.

In addition to violating the dead period rules, the meals, entertainment — which included taking a prospect’s parents to a gentlemen’s club — and travel expenses associated with the unofficial visits also constituted “impermissible recruiting inducements.”Former booster Regina Jackson, the mother of Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels, is mentioned numerous times in the 67-page report released by the NCAA as having assisted with the impermissible campus visits and additional violations. Among the instances Jackson is purported to have been involved in was the trip to the gentleman’s club, ...