Georgia Bulldog swim coach Jack Bauerle has spoken out this week about the NCAA investigation and the related suspension that kept him out of coaching for much of 2014.
Bauerle was the subject of an associated press profile this week, opening up about the investigation, the allegations of academic misconduct and the upcoming year before the 2016 Olympic Trials.
You can read the AP story, courtesy of The State in South Carolina, here.
Bauerle says he went on a surfing trip and spent time with family and friends during his indefinite suspension, but also notes that the whole time, he only wanted to be back on deck coaching.
“This sport envelopes you,” he says in the piece. “You live and breathe what the kids do. Yeah, you’re coaching them, but they also become really important to you day to day. You worry about them like your own kids.”
Maybe most notable was that Baurle expressed his disappointment in how the NCAA’s investigation was handled.
“It was pretty upsetting,” Bauerle said in a recent interview. “It got pretty offensive in some ways, being questioned about things when people know what I’ve stood for my entire life.”
There’s more detail in the full AP story, but Baurle admits he made a mistake in contacting a professor directly for a student, but also reiterates that he never intended to give a swimmer an academic advantage.
Bauerle was suspended indefinitely last winter as the NCAA investigated alleged academic integrity issues with the swimming & diving programs. The investigation ultimately netted him a 9-meet suspension, most of which he’d already served, and he returned to coaching at the tail end of 2014.
Dawg defenders please review the logic of your comments. The way to show you care about your swimmers academically is not to lean on a professor friend during finals week to let them add a course that they lack the prerequisites to take. The way a coach reveals his character is by taking responsibility for his actions not blaming the NCAA or offering utterly ridiculous explanations like “my mistake was not having Chase contact the professor directly”. Really Jack?? Is it your experience that a non-athlete at UGA could call a professor during finals week and get added to a course that they were not eligible to take and wind up getting an A without submitting a scrap of work?… Read more »
Slightly OT, but how is Chase Kalisz received/perceived in Athens? Really great swimmer, but Jack wouldn’t have put his career and legacy in jeopardy if he had greater confidence in Chase as a student. Despite that, Chase’s comments about redshirting to train for the Olympics weren’t overly gracious about college swimming in general and Geirgia swimming in particular.
I’m glad we finally got to hear Coach Baurle’s perspective on it, and I definitely am on his side. He makes one honest mistake and he gets caught in a ridiculously long investigation that should have never taken more than 2 weeks. I find it upsetting that there was no grace given or weighing of his long and stellar reputation for promoting student athletes well being when deciding this case. Despite how badly he was treated, he still maintained a great amount of professionalism throughout this ordeal. I was not a college swimmer, have never met Coach Baurle, nor do I profess to know the tortuous NCAA rules, but from the outset of this affair, it just seemed a very… Read more »
I can see how someone would be easily offended explaining how a swimmer he believed to be in academic jeopardy was added to a class during finals week that he lacked the pre-requisites to take and ended up with an A without submitting a scrap of work. This kind of thing happens all the time to non-athlete students so I am sure it was just another NCAA witch hunt. If we still operated under the fiction that big time coaches were expected to mold the character of their athletes I might be equally offended. Perhaps Baurele should get some tips from the football and basketball coaches on how to do these things under the NCAA radar?
If this is how you feel about Jack, you obviously do not know him. The academic accolades of the UGA swim team, both in college and post grad, have made it very clear that academic success and integrity is a high priority in the team. Likewise, the depth of talent on the team has proven time and time again that no one swimmer is crucial to their success. Jack could have easily let this situation bypass and his team would have done fine. Personally knowing Jack and his character, this situation was 100% caused by a mistake that resulted from him genuinely caring for the well-being of his swimmers.
Dawgfan, I could not agree With you more. D3DAD you obviously are mistaken and have a large lack of knowledge of Jack and the program that he has built.