Josh Pastner had been the Georgia Tech men's basketball coach for not even two months. He hadn't yet guided his players in a game, hadn't led them in practice, hadn't signed a single recruit.
But messages that appeared in Pastner's Twitter feed June 3, 2016, laid the groundwork for an NCAA investigation that now imperils Tech's basketball program.
An Arizona man named Ron Bell, then Pastner's friend and biggest fan, shared with the coach his messages urging a prospective recruit to sign with Tech. Those messages, the NCAA has since determined, turned Bell _ a former drug addict and prison inmate whom Pastner befriended several years ago _ into a representative of the school's athletics program.
And, the NCAA's staff concluded, Pastner "knew or should have known of Mr. Bell's involvement in promoting the institution's athletics program" to improperly recruit players for the coach's benefit.
Regardless, the NCAA apparently will not hold Pastner responsible for Bell's actions, or for those of a former assistant coach accused of giving cash to a recruit and a team member when he took them to an Atlanta strip club.
Tech announced late Thursday that the NCAA has notified the school of three severe rules violations involving Bell and the former assistant coach, Darryl LaBarrie. Tech faces significant, though still undetermined, penalties. The NCAA said LaBarrie not only gave money to the athletes, he later lied about it. (LaBarrie said the allegations "are not all factual.") And Bell, according to the NCAA, improperly paid for a trip by two Tech players to his home in Arizona and recruited another player to transfer to Tech.
But the NCAA accused Pastner of no wrongdoing, even though its rules presume that head coaches are accountable for compliance failures within their programs.
The NCAA declined to comment, as did Tech and Pastner. The coach's attorney, Scott Tompsett, said in a statement, "Josh cooperated fully with the NCAA investigation and he has not been charged with any violations."
However, a review of public records, many of them contained in legal filings, suggest that Bell did little to hide at least some of his illicit activities from Pastner, or anyone else. In a text to Pastner's wife, Kerri, Bell once boasted that when he delivered the transfer player, "Josh will be impressed with my recruiting skills."
