The N.C.A.A.’s decision came more than five years after Baylor’s efforts to cover up sexual assaults became public.
Baylor University, where sexual assault was a horrifying norm inside the football program in the 2010s, did not break N.C.A.A. rules when it failed to report allegations of wrongdoing, the association concluded on Wednesday. “Baylor admitted to moral and ethical failings in its handling of sexual and interpersonal violence on campus but argued those failings, however egregious, did not constitute violations of N.C.A.A. rules,” an association committee wrote in a ruling released on Wednesday. “Ultimately, and with tremendous reluctance, this panel agrees.” A different outcome, the committee said, would have required the panel “to ignore the rules the association’s membership has adopted,” something that it wrote would be “antithetical to the integrity of the infractions process.” The association’s decision came more than five years after a law firm hired by the university concluded that leaders of Baylor’s football program sometimes “affirmatively chose not to report sexual violence” to the appropriate authorities and that team officials had moved to “divert cases from the student conduct or criminal processes.
