Auburn assistant football coaches Tommy Thigpen and Trooper Taylor were pulled off the recruiting road for 45 days last fall by the school after Auburn self-imposed penalties from two secondary NCAA violations involving Tiger Prowl in the spring of 2010.

Thigpen, who coaches safeties, and Taylor, who coaches wide receivers, were found to have impermissible contact with a prospective student-athlete at his high school then later during a Tiger Prowl event in Pelham on April 28, 2010.

That was one of seven violations and/or “additional issues” involving Tiger Prowl the university self-reported to SEC commissioner Mike Slive in a letter from its attorney William H. King III dated Oct. 4, 2010.

Auburn released that report Friday afternoon, along with 18 additional self-reported NCAA secondary violations that occurred between July 2009 and July 2011, to the Opelika-Auburn News and other media outlets in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act.

Auburn prohibited Thigpen and Taylor from “participation in any off-campus recruiting activity,” between Sept. 13-Oct. 28, 2010, after their contact with a two-sport star that April day. The name of the high school athlete was redacted from the documents Auburn released, but the Birmingham News reported Friday that the athlete is Hueytown’s Jaboo Winston, who is a Florida State commit, and is highly regarded as one of the nation’s top football and baseball prospects.

Auburn prohibited its entire football staff from having any “on-campus or off-campus contact” with Winston from Sept. 1-Oct. 30, 2010.

The letter from King to the SEC also says that Auburn declined Winston’s request for complimentary tickets for the Auburn-South Carolina game in Jordan-Hare on Sept. 25, 2010.

Auburn also imposed a 60-day no-off-campus contact with the athlete during the off-campus contact period, which began at the start of this month and will last until January 2012.

The university also stated that its baseball staff was also prohibited from any on-campus contact with Winston for a 60-day period from Sept. 1-Oct. 30, 2010.

Auburn noted that Thigpen and Taylor “acted appropriately” when they “quickly” ended the impermissible contacts.

Auburn used Tiger Prowl as a way of holding multiple events across the state with the intention of generating interest and support for the football — and later — basketball programs. It was also a chance for multiple football coaches to take recruiting visits to schools during the spring evaluation period. They started with limos in 2009, then moved to a fully-loaded, Auburn-themed charter bus in 2010.

In the same month that these secondary violations occurred, the NCAA passed a rule where only two coaches could visit the same school at the same time during an evaluation period, in effect ending Tiger Prowl’s run.

Auburn also self-imposed as 30-day period where its football staff couldn’t have any off-campus recruiting activity at McGill-Toolen and David high schools from Sept. 1-Oct. 1, 2010, after it held a Tiger Prowl event April 26, 2010 at Archbishop Lipscomb Memorial Stadium, which is owned by McGill-Toolen and rented out to Davidson High.

It was a violation to have the Tiger Prowl bus on or at any school-owned property. The event in Mobile was originally scheduled to be held at a state park near the USS Alabama battleship.

According to King’s letter, when Auburn running backs coach Curtis Luper found out the event was being moved to the stadium, he called AU Senior Associate Athletic Director Rich McGlynn. McGlynn, the letter says, stated that the stadium must be a municipal property. Luper and the rest of the coaching staff present, according to the letter, were unaware that the stadium was owned by McGill-Toolen.

They were “of the impression that the City of Mobile owns the stadium,” King wrote to the SEC.

More secondary violations
Also in the documents released by Auburn on Friday, the school self-reported 18 secondary violations to the NCAA between July 2009 and July 2011.

The violations involved multiple sports, including football, swimming and others, and ranged from technical errors to inviting a family, who brought a prospective student-athlete with them, over for Thanksgiving dinner to impermissible phone calls, texts and, in one case, even a Facebook message.

All names on the documents have been redacted.

One violation resulted in the termination of a person working in the athletic department, who typed speech outlines for six student-athletes valued anywhere from $7 to $17.50.

This was considered an extra benefit and the student-athletes were deemed ineligible until they made restitution. Which, according to the documents, they did.

The violation occurred on the evening of July 15 and “into the early morning” of July 16, 2010, because the employee “had a skewed sense of priorities and used poor judgment,” believing, “it was ‘the lesser of two evils’ to type the outlines for the student-athletes rather than have them submit hand-written outlines, or turn in their outlines the next day or sometime over the weekend, which may have resulted in a lower grade,” the report states.

There was also a report Auburn turned in that stemmed from an image displayed on the Jordan-Hare Stadium video board during the Arkansas State game Sept. 4, 2010.

A fan had a sign with a high school recruit’s name on it, saying “Auburn ‘heart’ (name redacted).” That sign appeared on the video board for “mere seconds,” the report states, as camera crews panned the crowd. Regardless of how long it was on the video screen, a violation occurred.

The report goes on to say that someone, whose name was also redacted, found the person who brought the sign, took it, ripped it up and threw it away.