Yes, Accidental Pocket Dialing By a Georgia Coach Had to be Reported

Richt – one of the 10 highest-paid coaches in college football – did have to come clean on inadvertent texting, though. And frankly, the mere fact he had to report this is incredibly lame:

"Richt accidentally sent two text messages from his Blackberry to the father of football prospect Jordan Jenkins of Harris County on May 26th (text messages to prospects or their family members are impermissible per NCAA rules until one day after a prospect has signed a national letter of intent with the school). In the first instance, Richt received a text from Ron Jenkins asking for camp dates. Since Richt did not have the number programmed in his phone, the text was identified as “unknown.” Richt intended to forward the text to a recruiting assistant for identification but accidentally replied to Mr. Jenkins, which was a violation NCAA Bylaw 13.4.1.2. Richt immediately reported the inadvertent violation to compliance director Eric Baumgartner, who subsequently asked if Mr. Jenkins had replied. In an attempt to forward Mr. Jenkins’ response to Baumgartner, Richt accidently replied to Mr. Jenkins again, hence he had to report another text violation. "

Mark Richt is human. Who hasn’t accidentally replied to a text when you meant to forward it? Usually, though, instead of going through layers of bureaucracy following your mistake, you simply write, MY BAD or F ME or FUDGE or WHOOPS.

There has to be a solution to this NCAA madness. Taking into account the amount of times your parents have butchered text messages, college coaches must make this kind of mistake like twice a week, right? [AJC]