OK, here is an attempt to further smooth out the questions surrounding the Guy-Marc Michel ruling, announced tonight. We’ll start with the timeline.

Indiana first found out about Michel’s amateurism issues over the summer. Michel played for SLUC Nancy, a member of the French Pro A League. During his time at Nancy, he was signed on as a trainee, but he played in five games at the end of the 2007-08 season, thereby making his contract professional. (We’ll go deeper into the contract in a second.)

In August, as part of its due diligence, the university also learned that Michel had enrolled in some classes at a university in France in 2006, which is technically when he would have come to the point of finishing high school. There are some equivalency issues, obviously, and Indiana was trying to figure out exactly when high school ended and what we would define as college began.

This is important, because once an athlete enrolls in what the NCAA considers college or its equivalent, their five-year clock begins, meaning they have five years to complete their allowed eligibility.

Michel’s problem comes in the overlapping of these issues. The old NCAA rule used to be that any time spent playing on a team with what would be considered professionals required a one-year suspension, plus a per-game suspension tacked on at the end, depending upon how many games the player actually participated in. The ratio of that suspension would have been 2-to-1.

Under that scenario, Michel would only have one year of eligibility left, and a suspension of greater than one year to complete, essentially voiding his last year of eligibility.

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The details, per a release from IU Media Relations:

The NCAA Division I Student-Athlete Reinstatement Committee has denied Indiana University’s appeal on behalf of Guy-Marc Michel. As a result, he is not eligible to participate on the men’s basketball team.

According to the facts agreed to by the university and the NCAA, Guy enrolled in a French university in 2006, which started his five-year clock for Division I participation.

Guy played basketball for a French sports club from 2005 to the 2007-08 season. Although he competed the majority of the time on club teams not considered professional, he practiced and competed in five games with the club’s top-level team in 2007-08. Since the top-level team is considered a professional team per NCAA guidelines, his participation triggered NCAA amateurism violations.

Guy’s participation occurred before the new NCAA rule allowing prospective student-athletes to compete on teams with professionals while maintaining their amateur status.

The NCAA reinstatement committee and staff agreed Guy’s eligibility should not be reinstated because he does not have enough time left in his five-year window to complete the withholding conditions normally associated with this type of amateurism violations.

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