One of the more interesting -- and hilarious -- events that occurred during National Signing Day 2014 involved Auburn and a highly-rated recruit named Rashaan Evans.
Shortly before Evans put his Herbie Hancock to a National Letter of Intent, a profile of the player appeared on AU’s official website. There were two problems with that premature publication.
One, the five-star recruit ended up signing with hated in-state rival Alabama.
And, two, it was a (very minor) violation of NCAA bylaws. AU self-reported the secondary violation, as revealed in a report released by the school Tuesday.
In that report, AU went to great lengths to explain itself for that specific violation. From al.com:“Media personnel were able to hack into the site and ‘find’ the code to pull up the bio,” Auburn officials explained in a self-reported violation submitted to the NCAA in March. “The bio for Evans was then publicized on media sites. [Auburn] never posted the information on its own site, and never intended for the bio to be visible.”
...
Auburn explained to the NCAA “there was no intent to release the information; in fact the release of the information was an embarrassment to the athletics department, particularly the media relations staff.”AU’s enforcement staff went on to tell the NCAA that it will “work harder to ‘hide’ the information in code, so that future successful hacking attempts do not result in violations.” It goes without saying that AU will face no punitive measures over this minor violation.