Oklahoma running backs coach DeMarco Murray, who is entering his fifth season at his alma mater, will serve a one-game suspension this season after the NCAA determined he was involved in recruiting violations, the NCAA announced Tuesday.
According to the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions, Murray impermissibly contacted prospects and their families before he was allowed to do so.
Oklahoma, Murray and law enforcement personnel agreed that the violations in the football program occurred when Murray made impermissible contact with 17 prospects over 16 months, including 65 impermissible phone calls and 36 impermissible text messages. According to the NCAA, Murray indicated he was unaware that a COVID-19 exemption from recruiting contact rules had expired. During the investigation, law enforcement personnel determined the school had adequately educated football coaches about applicable recruiting rules and the timing of changes to them.
The school declined to say for which game Murray would serve his suspension.
Other violations occurred in the OU athletics program when then-head coach Tim Langford told a female athlete to give some of her scholarship money to two male athletes in the athletics program. As a result of the violations, the NCAA and Oklahoma agreed that both football coach Brent Venables and Langford violated head coach accountability rules.
Oklahoma will serve one year of probation and must pay a $5,000 fine. The NCAA also imposed a three-week ban on recruiting telephone and electronic correspondence any time between Dec. 8, 2024, and March 31, 2025. The OU football team also cannot host unofficial visitors during the Sooners’ season opener against Temple on Friday.
There were also other self-imposed sanctions, including a 20% reduction in spring football recruiting days and a reduction of Murray's recruiting days from 16.4 to eight, both of which would be met in 2023.
“The University discovered the violations through its monitoring systems and investigated, reported and addressed the matters promptly and appropriately,” an OU athletics department spokesperson said, according to a statement provided to ESPN. “The violations in question were limited to the actions of a coach who is no longer employed by the University and a current assistant coach. OU worked with the NCAA to manage the review and reach a conclusion, and the sanctions imposed by the University are now in effect.”
The NCAA considers these Level II sanctions mitigating for the university, Venables and Murray.
The NCAA presumes that head coaches are responsible for the actions of their staff, so it found Venables violated head coach accountability rules. However, Venables disputed his alleged liability for some of the earlier violations, because he was not personally involved in them and “demonstrated that he fostered an atmosphere of compliance and controlled his staff.” Because of that, both OU and the NCAA agreed that suspending Venables was “not appropriate.”
According to the NCAA, compliance staff determined that Oklahoma's compliance department had adequate monitoring systems in place related to telephone conversations, but in this case, football recruiting staff had not uploaded recruiting profiles for the respective prospects since they were not yet of recruiting age, and the telephone recruiting software included an unavoidable two-month delay in producing telephone records.
Murray is Oklahoma's career leader in total yards and touchdowns and was the NFL's Offensive Player of the Year in 2014. Venables is expected to address the media Wednesday on the SEC's weekly teleconference as the Sooners prepare to enter their first season in the conference.
