Kansas Director of Athletics Travis Goff and head basketball coach Bill Self addressed the media after the IARP ruling.

We will have much more coverage later but here are some of the key questions and answers during the media session.

Opening comment from Travis Goff:

The community leadership and athletic department have taken this nearly six year IARP process incredibly seriously. And I'm thankful to the IARP for recognizing the facts and instituting a thorough and objective process. Today's decision by the IARP supports what we have said from day one that the major infractions were accused of were unfounded, and specifically, the panel decision unequivocally confirms that our coaches were not involved nor had knowledge of payments to student athletes.

While doing our due diligence throughout this process, we did acknowledge lesser infractions for which we have self-imposed penalties, if you'll recall from last fall. And regarding the additional penalties announced in today's decision, we accept those and will move forward.

Significant resources, energy, time have been given into this process, and it put a great deal of stress on our leadership team, our coaches, our student athletes, to ultimately get to this outcome today. And I want to be clear that we continue to stand firmly and believe firmly in our compliance program at the University of Kansas and our compliance staff, and we'll continue to invest in and support that incredible team as we move forward.

I'm also very proud of the character and integrity in which our coaches and staff operate, including and even highlighting our men's basketball program. Coach Self, Coach Townsend, the entire staff around them. There's a culture of compliance that really is firmly ingrained in our entire department and certainly in our men's basketball program.

I want to express sincerest gratitude to Chancellor Girod for his unwavering support and leadership throughout this, and to Coach Self for his leadership and the way in which he's handled, at times certainly difficult process and his leadership of the very best basketball program in the country. Coach Self's always had our full trust and confidence in how he runs his program. That has never wavered, and it will not certainly going forward. We're excited to turn the page. We feel really good about all the things that are going on within the department, the momentum, certainly the upcoming season with this preseason number one men's basketball program. And we know our fans feel that culture and that excitement.

And I'll just conclude by emphasizing this point that we do things the right way at the University of Kansas, and that will continue to be a hallmark as we move ahead.

Opening comment from Bill Self:

Hope everybody's well today. I'd like to comment on the back of what Travis has said. I'd first like to start by thanking the IARP for their professionalism and the fair review of the facts throughout this entire process. I also want to make sure I express my sincere gratitude to Chancellor Girod and to Travis Goff for their support, leadership, and alignment that exist within our university and our athlete department.

And I'm very proud to be the head basketball coach here. As Travis just said, today is a good day for Kansas basketball. And the findings that the panel found reiterate that our staff acted with integrity and honesty and had no knowledge of payments to student athletes.

While this has been a very long process, I'm appreciative that it has ended and where it has ended, and I am eager to move forward without this cloud hovering above our program.

Q: You said all along for many years that when this was all said and done, that story would come true. How does it feel today…

Self: Yeah, I'm very happy that it's over. I'm certainly happy with the end results and at the same time don't feel like a celebration mode because this is exactly what we thought the end result would be years ago and it's taken such a long period of time to get here. But I am pleased with the findings because the findings are accurate.

Q: You mentioned the self-imposed penalties. Now that the case is concluded, I wanted to ask what went into the decisions of selecting those penalties as well as the juncture at which you imposed them…

Goff: I think when you rewind back, probably 15, 16, 17 months ago when we were discussing at that juncture going into the fall whether or not to self-impose. I think a lot of it was in the spirit of just wanting to move forward, wanting to have finality to this. I think that was anchor of those discussions. And we used some of the guidelines the NCAA provides in terms of penalties to help align with where we landed with our self-imposed penalties. And it feels as if they were probably on the heavier end of things but were willing to do so in order to give everyone the best chance to move forward.

Q: Do you feel like the vacated wins, the banner, the strength, all the stuff that goes along with that, did you expect that and do you feel like that was fair…

Self: I actually did feel like it was fair, and I actually felt like it should have been done by the rule. We had a player participate. Why ineligible due to an illicit payment that we knew nothing about, but he was still ineligible. Why participating? So the 15 wins that occurred while Silvio participated in the 2018, he didn't play in 17, but the 2018 spring semester, I believe are warranted to be taken away because that is the rule.

Q: Some schools the NCAA put the hammer down for seemingly nothing and then others. Can you talk about the inconsistency and what this did to college athletics…

Self: I'm not going to speak to what's happened at other schools. All I can speak to is what happened and did not happen at the University of Kansas. And certainly, we've held true to our initial statements on what we thought did or did not transpire. And I'm not going to speak to the NCAA. I'll let Travis do that. But this was certainly a long process. Six years seems a long time to get to this point, and we're not the only school that endured this long process, as you know.

Goff: I just would add to that when you look at the IARP cases of the last couple years, that there's a degree of consistency with how those were approached in that objective, outside lens that they apply to each of those cases.

Q: I'm just wondering, from the outside, it seems like when you do have self-imposed penalties, that does imply at least some measure of guilt. What do you think you guys could have done differently…

Self: I don't think it implies a measure of guilt at all. What I think it implies is we’re doing everything possible to move forward and put this behind us and at the same time doing what was in the best interest of our present student athletes and future student athletes to make sure they were not impacted in any negative way whatsoever.

I was okay with the self-impositions because as the leader of this program and the head coach, it's my responsibility to protect, preserve, look after our present student athletes and future student athletes in a way that it doesn't impact their experience in any way, shape, or form negatively at the University of Kansas. And so, in order to do that, the talks and the self-impositions was a way to make sure or to give us a better chance that occurred.

Q: Just what have the past six years been like…

Self: Well, there's been some good times in the past six years. The thing about it is, in my coaching journey, I've had a lot of good, and I've had far more good than not good. But you understand as a coach, you can't expect for it always to be good, and you deal with the things that aren't so good. I've said this many times, I love my profession, and I would rather be doing this and impacting youth than any other thing I could possibly do with my time. So, it sucked.

But over a course of 35 years, don't you expect to have some periods of time that aren't that great and so I think that myself and my staff have handled it very maturely, to be honest with you, and we've dealt with this in a way that we're going to go through this.

This is how it is in the short term it won't last forever, but it's not an excuse to impact how we do our job.

Q: Just from a recruiting standpoint, six years, how impactful could today's decision be or potentially be moving forward…

Self: I think from a recruiting standpoint, there's no doubt this has impacted recruiting. I'm not sure it's impacted recruiting recently as much as it was three or four years ago because the reality of it is I don't think this is as talked about today as what it was three or four years ago.

My staff knows this. I think our recruiting will be impacted favorably, but I don't know if it'll be a huge impact because I think my staff still done a pretty good job in the last few years recruiting players that are difference makers here at the University of Kansas.

Q: How happy are you the players don’t have to keep hearing about this…

Self: We met with our group today when we found out what was going on before we knew what the actual findings would be and told them basically that we didn't know exactly what to expect. And to be honest with you, the vast majority that have been here know that we've been doing this for a while.

Some of the players we have actually talked to about during the recruiting process, the young guys, that it didn't register with them as far as being anything that could impact them because it was so long ago. Some of these kids were in junior high or maybe the end of elementary school when this started.

I think the players it impacted the most were the ones in that 19 and 20 or 21 season but since then it doesn't feel quite the same to me because it's been such a.

Q: Travis, I know this predates you, but I'm wondering, has this case impacted at all the way you would have coaches interact with interests outside the university? Not just Adidas, but like, other people who are in that same sort of domain…

Goff: Well, I think again, we've had a long standing commitment to rules, education, to compliance, and that's really, truly been embedded in the culture and the fabric. Certainly, when this case presented itself, this department, again way before my arrival, did a lot of things to continue to enhance the way it viewed, whether it be partners, sponsors, et cetera.

But it was just complementing things that were already in place. And so, I think as the world of college athletics has evolved, we continue to keep compliance front and center. We've done so in NIL and every other aspect. And I don't think it's really had a profound change on how we've operated because we've already been at a really high level in that space.

Q: Bill, you've mentioned a cloud a couple times, the cloud of just this hanging over you. I wonder if you feel like at this point with the penalties enforced was the cloud more of a penalty than anything that you're actually dealing with…

Self: I think that's a great question. I would say the unknown was probably as much of a penalty as anything going a period of time that we did with the unknown and not knowing how to address it or how to attack it. But I'll make one thing clear. The penalties that were imposed today were basically the vacation of wins, the three years probation. And the other penalties that have been discussed were self-imposed penalties that we knew that were going to deal with because we had self-imposed those before the ruling ever came out.

Q: Travis, could this happen again? And you get the sense that maybe there's been so much change at the NCAA level. Do you think that with the changes that this I mean, they drugged your program through the mud for six years and you're not the only one. Do you think that the process is going to be expedited so that this doesn't happen again…

Goff: Well, I know that's one of the things they're looking at in particular as it relates to NIL is the enforcement process to ensure that, in particular, in these more egregious NIL inducement situations, that they have a process that's a lot more efficient. So, they're I think, building that out. I'm optimistic that it'll be a much improved, much more efficient, much more timely exercise going forward. I think that's one of the positives coming out of this long journey and putting a conclusion to the IARP segment of enforcement. And I think there's a chance for it to better at the end of the day. And I think we're optimistic on that. We will have contributed to a better exercise. Let's put it that way.

Q: I wondered, looking back, the three day hearing, how important was that and how professional was the IARP? And when you left after that marathon three days, how did you feel?

Goff: It was incredibly important, the team, some of whom are here today, were exceptional in helping us prepare. We've got such a great team within athletics up on campus, certainly the legal team involved. So, the significance of preparation, the alignment, it was so important for us to be fully aligned going into that hearing, consistent with our approach, and that's how it played out over the course of those three days. And the IARP, I think, in particular, you asked about was incredibly professional and ran, I think, a really effective hearing over that time.

Self: I agree. I think in today's time, and not that I'm an expert on this, but having a group as aligned as we did under the leadership of our Chancellor and I'm talking about all the different legal teams and everybody that's being represented. To go into that, I felt like that it was very important and significant and certainly was done with great professionalism on all fronts.