According to The Advocate, LSU was handed down some penalties by the Southeastern Conference for violations resulting from an unnamed recruit.  This, in itself, is not worrisome, but the story details that LSU signed a student-athlete to a Financial Aid Agreement, which permitted LSU to have unlimited contact with that student athlete. The problem is that the player ended up committing to Alabama:

The recruit signed a financial aid agreement with LSU intending to enroll early in January, but he decided not to enroll at the school. That makes at least some of LSU’s unlimited contact with the prospect illegal.

LSU officials declined comment.

Matt Womack, an offensive tackle from Mississippi, signed a financial aid agreement with LSU in August intending to enroll at the school in January. Instead, Womack de-committed — as hundreds of prospects do each year — and signed a National Letter of Intent with Alabama in February.

If this doesn’t ring a bell, it should because this is exactly what happened with Jarrett Stidham signing his Financial Aid Agreement, which permitted coaches unlimited contact with Stidham.  Stidham, then un-committed from Texas Tech and ended up committing to Baylor and signing there on National Signing Day.

The bad part here is that LSU lost a ton of recruiting evaluation time.

LSU will lose 21 of 210 evaluation days in 2015 (17 in the spring and four in the fall). An evaluation day is defined by the NCAA as any off-campus activity designed to assess the academic qualifications or athletics ability of a recruit, including any visit to a recruit’s school or the observation of a recruit participating in any practice or competition.

What’s bigger than the loss of evaluation days? For two cycles, coaches can’t issues financial aid agreements to prospects, a serious disadvantage. During the same time, other schools can sign prospects to FAA, thus receiving unlimited contact with them.

That’s some pretty hefty penalties for a school that was permitted to talk to their recruit. The other side of this is that I believe that Chad President was in a similar situation with Baylor, he signed a Financial Aid Agreement with Baylor, but ended up committing to Tulsa after Baylor snagged Stidham.