Binghamton Avoids Major Sanctions

Binghamton University acknowledged Monday that its men’s basketball program had made mistakes but said that the N.C.A.A.’s investigation had been closed with no major violations found.

C. Peter Magrath, the university’s interim president, said in a telephone interview that the N.C.A.A. found two secondary violations, but not “the big bad stuff that can get you sanctioned.” The university was notified in a letter Monday.

Binghamton’s program was shaken in the wake of point guard Emanuel Mayben’s arrest for selling crack cocaine in September 2009. That began a string of six player dismissals, the resignation of Athletic Director Joel Thirer, and Coach Kevin Broadus’s being placed on a leave of absence. Binghamton also removed itself from the America East tournament under pressure.

The N.C.A.A. found that the former assistant Marc Hsu had provided impermissible travel to members of the team, accounting for the two secondary violations, but it found nothing that would significantly handicap the program’s future. (Hsu, now an assistant at Texas Southern, did not return a call seeking comment.)

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say this provides us with a lot of relief,” the interim athletic director Jim Norris said. “I’m very pleased for our staff and our student athletes.”

An investigation sponsored by the State University of New York and led by a former chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals, Judith S. Kaye, found that Binghamton compromised its academic standards to admit recruits and showed an e-mail between an assistant coach and players discussing cash payments and academic fraud.

“Regardless of the N.C.A.A., it’s been a tremendous embarrassment to not just Binghamton, but everyone in the league,” said the former Vermont coach Tom Brennan, who coached against Binghamton in the America East Conference.

SUNY Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher did not return a call seeking comment. She said in March that she was disappointed that Binghamton compromised its academic reputation for athletics. Binghamton calls itself the top public school in the Northeast.

Broadus has been reinstated to the athletic department and his salary is $223,426. His contract runs through 2014, and his current assignment is senior athletic administrator for academic assessment. Mark Macon has a two-year contract to be the interim coach.

“We have a basketball coach,” Magrath said. “His name is Mark Macon, and for the foreseeable future he’s going to be our basketball coach. There will be no change in basketball coach, athletic director or the team that Mark Macon has put together.”

One of Broadus’s lawyers, Don Jackson, said that the report cleared Broadus’s name with the N.C.A.A. and that he looked forward to resuming coaching. Jackson blamed the university for the off-court problems.

“It’s the fault of a university to not have the infrastructure in place to support the student-athletes,” he said.

Zimpher said in March that once a permanent president was put in place, that person would hire a new athletic director, who would hire a new coach. Magrath said there had been no change in those plans.