Earlier this month when the NCAA Committee on Infractions met behind closed doors in Indianapolis to consider penalties against the University of Kentucky for major violations of its rules, a grandfatherly man who once served on that body was among those who spoke to the quality of the school's internal investigation. His name is Roy Kramer, and he is commissioner of the Southeastern Conference.

	SEC commisioner Roy Kramer has lobbied the NCAA to punish programs that run afoul of its rules with scholarship cuts.

"I'll have a minor role," Kramer said in the days leading up to the hearing. "That's between Kentucky and the NCAA. I'm just an observer."

He was being modest. In many ways, Kramer was the investigation.

When Kentucky rules compliance coordinator Sandy Bell first learned of the alleged recruiting scandal last November, the first people she said she called were Kramer and NCAA enforcement chief David Price -- in that order. When the school's trustees wondered whether to hire an outside law firm that can bring to the investigation some objectivity and expertise in NCAA rules, Kramer said no. He would supply the necessary services, including use of a private investigator under contract to the SEC.

When Wildcats recruiting coordinator Claude Bassett was interviewed on campus, Kramer, 72, was in Lexington, Ky., asking questions and tapping away on his laptop computer. Kramer suggested the scope and direction of the probe, and in the end prescribed the sanctions the Wildcats are suggesting to the infractions committee as fair and proper -- a potential loss of 19 scholarships spread over three years. No bowl ban is being proposed, despite violations that are some of the most serious in recent years.

"We asked Roy and David several times: Is a bowl (ban) appropriate?" Bell said. "Consistently, the advice we received was that wasn't a penalty that fit the crime."

The Kentucky case demonstrates the extent to which conferences can emerge as key players in today's high-stakes enforcement and infractions process. With the NCAA's investigative arm lacking the punch it used to pack, some conferences have taken aggressive roles in the outcome of these cases. Under NCAA rules, each school has the responsibility to "identify and report to the Association instances in which compliance has not been achieved." But conferences can become the middle-man -- the critical, third players that can make or break a case.

Death of the Penalty

If recent history is any predictor, fans of Alabama and Kentucky football in the coming weeks will receive the present they hope for this holiday season -- modest sanctions. Yet, these are two of the biggest rules violations cases in a decade. In a three-day series, ESPN.com uses two cases to examine how the NCAA's mysterious infractions and enforcement process has changed since Southern Methodist was temporarily shut down in 1987 in the landmark "death penalty" case. Major cases since SMU: SEC | Big Ten | Pac-10 | Big 12 | ACC | WAC | Big East | C-USA | Others | By Year

An overwhelmed NCAA enforcement staff welcomes the help. But others cite the danger of a conference tailoring the results of an investigation to its own interests, especially in an era when conferences have less financial incentive than ever to see their members severely punished.

"I don't think the conferences ever had motivation to enforce anything," said Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College and author of "Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and Conflict in Big-Time College Sports." "If anything, the motivation has been not to skunk on (its schools) so potential conference revenues aren't affected."

Like other conferences, the SEC shares many of its revenues. The conference will distribute $78.1 million to its 12 member institutions this year from money generated by football television, bowls, the SEC football championship, basketball television, the SEC men's basketball tourney and NCAA Tournament. The windfall has doubled since 1994.

That year, Kramer negotiated the SEC's first network television deal. Now, football television provides nearly half of all revenues shared, $33.7 million. In return, the SEC must deliver what television executives hope are 40 quality games each season -- 13 to national network partner CBS, 12 to national cable partner ESPN, 13 to syndicator Jefferson Pilot, and two to regional cable unit Fox Sports Net South. This season, for the first time, CBS awarded the SEC its national game of the week each Saturday.

Kramer also has commitments with a record seven bowls. The SEC is guaranteed at least one of the eight spots in the lucrative Bowl Championship Series, with the opportunity to get a second invitation if a team is ranked high enough. Beyond that, the Citrus, Cotton, Outback, Music City, Peach and Independence bowls expect to get SEC teams -- as long as enough of them win the NCAA minimum of six regular-season games to qualify. Those non-BCS bowl contracts are up for renewal after this season.

The revenue-sharing agreements create a scenario in which every school would be affected if a conference rival such as Kentucky or Alabama is slapped with a television or bowl ban. Alabama also recently went before the NCAA Infraction Committee for major rules violations.

"Would it impact us if we don't share in a $1 million (bowl payout)? Absolutely," said Ole Miss athletics director John Shafer, whose football program generated $10.1 million last year. "That's budgeted money. That's money spent before the fact. As one of the SEC's smaller budgets, it would hurt."

Larger programs, such as Tennessee with its $37 million in football revenues, more easily can absorb any financial hit. But the conference still might have to deal with ornery television executives, and member schools concerned about the image of the conference. When the allegations in the Alabama and Kentucky cases first hit SEC media, nagging comparisons to the scandal-ridden and now-defunct Southwest Conference were revived.

"Other institutions get pissed when these (programs) go down," said John Lombardi, who was president of the University of Florida when the Gators were slapped with a one-year bowl ban in 1990. "SEC people were upset at us for years. Everyone's genteel about it, but no one's happy that you got in trouble."

	Most penalized, by conference
	Times football teams in current conferences have been involved in major infractions cases since SMU received the "death penalty" in 1987. In some cases, violations occurred during a team's previous conference affiliation:
	Conference	Times	Most recent
	Big 12	8	Kansas St., 1999
	SEC	7	Georgia, 1997
	Big Ten	5	Wisc., 2001
	Pac-10	4	USC, 2001
	Big East	4	Miami, 1995
	WAC	3	SMU, 2000
	ACC	3	FSU, 1996
	C-USA	3	Memphis, 1989
	Mount. West	1	Utah, 1987
	Independent	1	Notre Dame, 1999
	Source: NCAA infractions database, ESPN.com research

So can a conference possibly investigate its own members if the incentive is so strong to minimize wrongdoing? Yes, said John Gerdy, a recreation professor at Ohio University who was SEC associate commissioner for compliance from 1989 to '95.

"There are some serious conflicts of interest," he said. "It's not easy on a conference. But Roy has been there a long time, and he's built up a lot of credibility. I think he can do it."

So does Kramer, who is sometimes referred to as the most powerful man in college football. A former college lineman who grew up outside Knoxville, Tenn., Kramer has served as a head coach at Central Michigan, athletics director at Vanderbilt and member of several influential NCAA committees, including the NCAA Management Council. As SEC commissioner, he created the first conference championship game, negotiated the first conference television contract and founded the BCS.

"We have nothing to do with the final NCAA penalties so there's no conflict," Kramer said. "We just try to give them the best information to make their decisions.

NCAA officials, asked whether conferences have too much influence on the infractions process, declined comment.

The only other major conference that investigates its members is the Pac-10, which has wrestled with an additional conflict because it also goes on to penalize its schools before the NCAA weighs in.

In the early 1990s, the Pac-10 levied most of the sanctions given the University of Washington, which received a two-year bowl ban and partial television ban for recruiting violations. That case led to charges by Husky fans that conference members were punishing the team as a way to enhance their own position; the conference responded that it simply was trying to make sure its schools play fair. It was a hard position for the conference to defend, considering that people such as Mike McGee, athletics director at rival Southern California, were on the infractions committee.

SEC bylaws give Kramer the right to levy penalties on member schools, but he opts not to do so. Kramer said he sees himself as a "supportive entity as a school moves through" a probe.

Most conferences want to have nothing to do with the enforcement business. Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said he has given feedback to schools on possible penalties but only when his advice was clearly regarded as a second opinion. His conference doesn't investigate violations.

"If we find information, we turn it over to the NCAA," Delany said. "I don't think you can sit around the table one day and try to market your programs and resolve complicated political problems, then sit around the same table the next day and judge whether violations occurred involving a player that several teams were vying for."

Despite his background as a former NCAA investigator, Delany said he has never, as commissioner, participated in interviewing a witness, as Kramer does on occasion.

"Roy likes to do that kind of thing," he said. "To me, that's the job of the investigator or lawyer. I don't know what the point is."

Exiled from SEC country

Claude Bassett, the former Kentucky recruiting-coordinator-turned-scandal-fall-guy, knows he better get used to coaching high school football. ROBSTOWN, Texas -- Claude Bassett is a big man in a big state who is paying a big price for his NCAA sins. This old cotton-growing community halfway between Houston and the Mexico border is where the central figure in the Kentucky football scandal is trying to rebuild his career as coach of a local high school team that has won just one of its past 39 games. Bassett resigned at Kentucky late last year for alleged misconduct. In the coming months, the former recruiting coordinator and director of football operations was accused of violating numerous NCAA rules. Improper gifts to players. Academic fraud. Sending $1,500 in money orders to a Memphis high school coach, allegedly to steer players to Kentucky. "I've been accused of just about everything shy of being part of the Kennedy assassination," Bassett said. He admits to much, but not all of it. He claims he did not pay the coach to steer players. And he doesn't like how the school has pinned most of the blame on him. In its filings with the NCAA, Kentucky proposed cuts of 20 scholarships but no bowl or television ban. It also noted that it has taken a host of corrective actions, including the forced departure of Bassett and head coach Hal Mumme. "Obviously it's their job to continue to make me out to be the bad guy -- the lone wolf," he said. "That's basically the way the thing is geared by the NCAA, in that if you really harm the individual we'll take it easy on the school." Bassett expects to receive what the NCAA calls a "show-cause" order of undetermined length that would force any member school to appear before the infractions committee to get approval before hiring him. It's a common tool used by the committee to focus punishment on individuals, not programs. But banishing individuals doesn't change the pressures to cheat in college football, said Bassett, who considers those pressures greater than ever. He says he was doing nothing different than what many other college recruiting coordinators do. "I intend to take my punishment," he said. "I just pray that it's done with the concept of what I did and not what somebody wishes I had done or wants to do to me in the hopes of lightening their load." -- Tom Farrey

The point is that Kramer knows his stuff, said Bell, Kentucky's point person on its investigation. As a member of the NCAA infractions committee from 1988 to '97, Kramer was known as a tough interrogator who didn't like to be misled. Those skills were put to use at Kentucky in an interview with Bassett, who allegedly admitted under pressure from Kramer, Bell said, that he sent $1,400 to a Memphis, Tenn., high school coach to steer recruits to the Wildcats. (Bassett admits sending the money but disputes that he ever told Kramer and Bell it was to steer prospects).

But Kramer's time on the committee also gave him an education in how to get in and out of an NCAA investigation with the least damage possible. He has been sharing those insights with conference members since at least 1990, when Kramer was recused from the committee's deliberations on the Florida case due to conflict of interest but still counseled the school in private.

"When in crisis, one of his jobs is to advise institutions on how to get right with God and minimize sanctions," Lombardi said. "He was very helpful to us."

At Florida's infractions committee hearing, Gerdy, the SEC's representative, argued that the NCAA should go light on the school because draconian sanctions would make it difficult for the SEC to encourage other schools to set up top-notch compliance programs, as the Gators had after a 1984 run-in with the NCAA.

The NCAA listened. Then-committee member John E. Nowak later said, "Florida got the biggest discount, on major penalties, that's ever been given in NCAA history." But the comment didn't silence moaning Gator fans.

Kramer's record for helping keep his conference teams out of harm's way has improved since he left the infractions committee.

Louisiana State's men's basketball team was hit with a few scholarship cuts and a one-year ban from postseason tournaments in 1998 for alleged booster payments of $5,000 to former prep star Lester Earl. But with Kramer advising and in attendance at an NCAA appeals hearing, LSU got the postseason ban overturned on the eve of the SEC Tournament -- saving the Tigers a reported $1 million in proceeds. The only other SEC basketball program cited for major violations in the past four years is Alabama, which received no serious sanctions for an assistant coach allegedly soliciting $5,000 from boosters in an attempt to acquire a player.

Among SEC football teams, none in the past four years has been found guilty of a major rules violation -- much less received any bowl, TV or scholarship sanctions. Only once before, in the early '70s, have SEC teams gone so long without getting an NCAA spanking. That's not a bad record for perhaps the most competitive conference in college football, where reports and rumors of cheating swirl with regularity.

Most acts of cheating go undiscovered, said Tony Franklin, the former Kentucky offensive coordinator who left the school last year after four seasons on the Wildcats staff.

"I've recruited everywhere," he said. "I've recruited in New Jersey, Michigan, the East Coast, West Coast, mountains of Colorado, the Northeast. The South is by far the worst of all the places. If you're going to try to get a good football player in the South, the possibility of cheating coming up is much higher than anywhere else."

Said former NCAA investigator Dirk Taitt: "I don't know if cheating is any more prevalent in the South, but the stakes are higher. There's a religious fervor about the sport that brings out the worst in folks. That makes it much harder (for the NCAA) to get witnesses to come forward and speak out than elsewhere."

Increasingly, the NCAA has let universities and conferences take the lead on investigations. That philosophy of encouraging schools to turn themselves in first has bred more of an atmosphere of cooperation than in years past, but at the same time it has given the school greater latitude to define a case before the NCAA steps in, say former NCAA investigators.

"There's an art to this," Taitt said. "It's a matter of who talks to whom when. What information gets shared with whom. If (NCAA investigators) are not on top of things early, you can deep-six a case before it fully develops."

Franklin praises Bell, of Kentucky, for her integrity and desire to root out the violations involving Bassett. But he argues that the scope of the internal investigation was too narrow and didn't look hard enough at whether other violations might have existed. The NCAA provided guidance and asked follow-up questions, but let Kentucky and the SEC take the lead on the probe.

"That would be like the police calling and saying, 'Hey Tony, we hear you have marijuana in the house, so will you look around and see if there is any and let us know and then we'll come and arrest you?' " Franklin said. "Doesn't quite seem to be the way it should work."

When potential rules violations arise, Kramer mobilizes a private investigator on contract with the SEC, Bill Sievers. He's a former FBI agent, and those who have worked beside him say he looks the part, with the serious presence of a G-Man.

Using his skills from law enforcement, Sievers helped confirm violations by checking financial transactions and phone records, Bell said. He handled the interviews in Memphis and sat in on others in Lexington, encouraging at least one reluctant witness to talk, she said. "He brings a little more of a fear factor, even with the good ol' boys," Bell said.

And yet, former NCAA investigators said they find it odd that a sleuth with Sievers' background has not dug up more violations at other schools since he started working for the SEC in the mid-1990s. Kramer concedes that some of it goes undetected, although he's comfortable that the problem is not out of control.

"How many murderers are caught? How many people who are speeding on the freeway today are caught? How many people (are busted) in any situation?" Kramer said. "Is every situation perfect? No. Is there an attempt by our institutions through their compliance programs to address the issues in a strong way, with rules seminars, rules compliance with their coaches? Yes, in a very positive way."

Said Taitt: "Kramer's done a wonderful job of getting the attention of (SEC) schools through strong leadership. But does that suggest they don't have people subscribing to old-school ways of cheating? Not at all. I'm sure it's still there."

Some of that dirt got shoveled earlier this month in Indianapolis at the NCAA infractions committee hearings. There's no reason to believe the SEC will get buried underneath it. The committee usually adds to a school's set of self-imposed sanctions, just to show it is in charge. But it has been reluctant to insert TV or bowl bans since the mid-1990s when Kramer, as a committee member, was among those who argued for a move away from those sanctions on the grounds that scholarship cuts more often fit the crime.

The year has been a rough one for the Wildcats and Crimson Tide. But unless Kramer isn't reading the NCAA right for once on penalties, the damage won't be crushing, or collateral. Not that he wants to be seen as playing any role in the infractions process.

"I don't think we have any influence at all," Kramer said of conference commissioners. "I haven't seen any influence. The NCAA can do whatever it wants."

Bell is more effusive about Kramer's guidance. "The more I speak to people in other conferences, the more I realize how lucky we are in the SEC" to have him, she said.

Kramer's been around a long time. Just long enough to know the vagaries of NCAA's odd brand of justice.

Tom Farrey is a senior writer with ESPN.com. He can be reached at tom.farrey@espn.com.