Iowa to self-report Level III violation involving impermissible contact with Kadyn Proctor to NCAA

IOWA CITY — Iowa Athletics will self-report a violation related to impermissible contact with then-Alabama offensive lineman Kadyn Proctor to the NCAA, athletics director Beth Goetz said on Thursday.

The expected Level III violation — that’s the least severe level of NCAA violations — is a result of a text message sent by Iowa football recruiting director Tyler Barnes to Proctor in September.

Goetz, paraphrasing the message, told reporters from The Gazette and The Athletic that it was along the lines of, “Hey buddy, don’t listen to the naysayers. … Keep your head up.”

“It's impermissible because it's still considered tampering,” Goetz said. “But there's nothing untoward in the writing of the text message.”

A tweet by Barnes from September in which he quote-tweeted a reporter and said that Proctor is going to “be a stud” and “will be more than fine” is not an issue, Goetz said.

Several months later and after Alabama’s longtime coach Nick Saban announced his retirement, Proctor entered the transfer portal. The former five-star recruit from the Des Moines area committed to Iowa less than a week after entering the portal.

The former Southeast Polk star initially committed to his home-state Hawkeyes out of high school before flipping his commitment and signing with Alabama.

Iowa has not yet formally reported the violation to the NCAA as it gathers necessary information.

“It takes us a little bit to go through the process and collect the information we need to collect,” Goetz said. “And then we pass it along to the NCAA.”

The NCAA’s tampering rules dictates that any athletics staff member “shall not communicate or make contact with the student-athlete of another NCAA Division I institution or any individual associated with the student-athlete ... directly or indirectly, without first obtaining authorization through the notification of transfer process.”

Tampering concerns arose after Proctor said in an interview with WQAD-TV after he committed that he and Iowa “still have those relationships.”

“Even after I was doing bad in the SEC and struggling, they hit me up and said, ‘We’re proud of you, you’re going to get through this. That’s what ultimately helped me with this decision because they still believed in me.”

Based on similar cases that the NCAA has seen, Goetz anticipates the enforcement to be to the extent of “make sure you’re educated, and don’t do it again.”

“It doesn’t lessen the fact that we need to be responsible for what the rules are,” Goetz said. “Any time we make a mistake, we’re going to hold ourselves accountable and take appropriate actions to ensure we don’t find ourselves back in that same position again.”

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com