Kentucky vacates 10 wins from 2021 as NCAA finds rules violations in football, swim programs

LEXINGTON, Ky. — The NCAA has placed the University of Kentucky football and swimming and diving programs on two years of probation as a result of separate rules violations.

As part of the agreement between UK and the NCAA, the football program will vacate any wins from the 2021 season in which 11 players who accepted payment for hours they did not work in jobs at the UK hospital during the spring of 2021 to March 2022 appeared in. UK went 10-3 in 2021 with a win over Iowa in the Citrus Bowl, and all 10 victories will be vacated. That season marked just the second time since 1977 UK had won 10 games in a season.

The Herald-Leader first reported the investigation into the hospital jobs for football players in September 2022.

UK’s investigation at the time revealed multiple football players had been paid for hours in jobs at the hospital that they had not actually worked. The hospital supervisor of the jobs, which had been cleared by the athletics department compliance department, was fired, but no one in the athletic department was found to have known about the inaccurate time cards.

The specific players involved have never been publicly identified by UK, but star running back Chris Rodriguez was suspended for the first four games of the 2024 season as a result of the investigation. Outside linebacker Jordan Wright was also suspended for the 2022 season opener due to the investigation. Other players involved had transferred away from Kentucky before the 2022 season.

“For over a couple decades, we have worked really hard to ensure our compliance and our integrity was at the highest level,” UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart said in a statement. “In this case, our processes worked. Our compliance office uncovered both of these violations and worked through over the last three years trying to find a way through to a resolution which we have now received.”

The swimming and diving program violations result from “exceeding limits on countable athletically related activities when student-athletes were not provided with required days off and exceeded practice hours for nearly three years,” according to an NCAA news release. Those violations occurred during the tenure of coach Lars Jorgensen, who has also been accused of sexual assault by multiple former swimmers.

According to the NCAA release, UK “agreed that it failed to monitor its swimming and diving program and that the underlying violations demonstrated a head coach responsibility violation,” but a former unnamed coach did not participate in the agreement. The case against that coach remains ongoing with further penalties against him possible.

The NCAA agreed no athletics department staff members should have reasonably known about the football violations so there was no support for a failure-to-monitor violation.

“We respect the findings,” UK president Eli Capilouto wrote in an email to the university community. “There is a process. We participated in it. We accept the final resolution, and we are moving forward.

“However, it is important to underscore that the NCAA strongly affirms the rigor of our rules compliance and reporting systems within athletics with respect to the football program. And in the case of the swimming program, the “failure to monitor” violation took place during the pandemic. Then, most student-athletes were not on campus and our customary in-person monitoring was not possible due to public health protocols.”

“As an institution and athletics program, our priority is the health and well-being of our students, faculty and staff. That is why we acted swiftly and are working hard to prevent similar situations from occurring in the future. For the swim program, that included dismissing the coach for the NCAA rules violations regarding the monitoring of practices that Athletics was aware of at that time.”

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