https://www.newsobserver.com/sports/article232761247.html
The NCAA’s case against N.C. State University alleging an improper $40,000 payment to former basketball player Dennis Smith Jr. does not include interviews of the two men accused of being at the center of the arrangement — former Adidas consultant T.J. Gassnola and former men’s assistant basketball coach Orlando Early.
The exhibit list includes references to several attempts to interview Early, Gassnola and Adidas executive Jim Gatto, who was convicted last October in a federal trial in New York of arranging illegal payments to Smith and basketball recruits at Louisville and Kansas.
The exhibit list indicates that NCAA investigators sent “refusal to cooperate” letters to Gassnola and Gatto, but no such letter is listed for Early.
The lack of input from Early, Gassnola, Gatto, Farmer and Smith in the NCAA investigation suggests the $40,000 payment allegation rides on Gassnola’s testimony and other evidence submitted in the federal case. His testimony is one of 16 documents from the criminal case listed as exhibits in the NCAA’s investigation.
This is the first case under the NCAA’s new evidentiary rules, which allow information from criminal cases to be used in NCAA investigations.