WSU Baseball Investigation Heats Up
In another article on Wichita State baseball’s apparel investigation, Paul Suellentrop of the Wichita Eagle gets the other side of the story, from the administrative assistant at the center of the allegations:
Randy Rathbun, [Shelley] Wombacher’s lawyer, said he is angry that the university is using her as a scapegoat after her 20-plus years of work. According to Rathbun, coaches, administrators and athletes, from the baseball program and other sports and departments within the athletic department, often ordered from Under Armour through Wombacher. The practice was common, he said, for several years.
That would seem to run counter to WSU’s initial statement that it believed the violations were isolated to the baseball program, though the university said it would do a broader investigation to ensure that was the case. An NCAA investigation would also not likely be limited to just one sport and would require some answers as to whether the violations went further.
Rathbun also passed along comments from Wombacher which call into question WSU’s monitoring and education. Wombacher claims she was never trained about permissible apparel, simply ordered the SKUs she was given, and that orders were sometimes sent to home addresses. All of those claims will likely be scrutinized by WSU and the NCAA enforcement staff.
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