LAS CRUCES - Every day Braun Cartwright fields calls from coaches at New Mexico State University.

Cartwright, NMSU's director of athletics compliance, often answers questions about the subtleties of the NCAA's manual, a rule book that, in all its robust, 444-page glory, straddles the sensible and seemingly absurd.

That density, officials say, can tax efficiency of compliance personnel, place athletes in odd predicaments, and ensnare even the most knowledgeable and well-intended coaches into a possible minor violation, something typically viewed as insignificant to the NCAA.

Such situations are easy to find.

Just this week, Cartwright said, the NMSU compliance office reviewed the role an assistant basketball coach played in bailing suspended Aggie senior Tyrone Watson from jail.

Doña Ana County Detention records show the assistant, Paul Weir, made the $500 payment to bail Watson, a former starter he recruited to NMSU five years ago. That, on its face, breaks an NCAA rule, a veteran compliance official from a Pac 12 school said, but is only considered a minor violation.

But, sources said, Weir's signature on the jail forms doesn't paint the entire picture.

Before Watson's arrest on felony battery charges, his attorney, Joe Coronado, arranged a bond hearing. After a Magistrate Court judge set Watson's bond, police arrested him.

At that time, as is customary Coronado said, he took all his client's possessions, which included a cashier's check Watson had received from home to pay the bond. Coronado said he eventually handed that cashier's check to Weir, simply because the assistant coach was there.

In his review, Cartwright said he wasn't looking at the issue of guaranteeing bond - because it was Watson's money - but at another minor infraction: the assistance in payment of bills, which is also barred, even when the funds come from the student-athlete's pocket.

Those are neighboring rules in the NCAA manual, occupying the same section entitled, "other prohibited benefits." Veteran compliance officials called such violations rare and said the likely repercussion would be rules education, especially if it's unintentional and not a repeat offense.

Sources said that's what happened in this case. Weir is a respected basketball tactician whose pipeline to Canada has boosted Aggie basketball under head coach Marvin Menzies. As a seasoned assistant, Weir, whom Menzies calls a "head coach in the making," takes pride in knowing the rules.

The obscurity of those aforementioned rules and the likelihood, officials said, Weir's case will be handled administratively - perhaps not even going past the WAC offices, to the NCAA - doesn't make these events unique.

An NCAA spokeswoman said that schools around the country reported 4,327 secondary violations in 2011, the most recent year with available data. They are deemed secondary because they are, according to the NCAA, "isolated or inadvertent and provide only minimal recruiting, competitive or other advantages."

Added WAC commissioner Jeff Hurd: "They're generally not anything to be concerned about."

Hurd noted that some are "unenforceable" and already force compliance officials to prioritize, focussing on more critical issues.

Some in college athletics have wondered, then, if many of these minor issues justify the work required by compliance personnel and coaching staffs.

"Secondary violations occur quite often in this business," Menzies said from the airport as his team traveled to San Jose, Calif. "The reason being the moving target that is the NCAA manual."

To address that common lament, the NCAA late last year announced a new enforcement structure projected to streamline rules, hasten investigations and adjust penalties.

Designed for efficiency and to shift the focus to the "most egregious violations," these changes to the governing body of college athletics are set to take effect this August.

Until then, administrators, coaches and athletes will continue to operate under the old system that some described as having all the touch and precision of a sledgehammer.

It's the system that required former NMSU basketball coach Reggie Theus to obtain an NCAA waiver, Cartwright said, just so he could visit then-recruit Herb Pope in a hospital. Pope was shot four times in 2007. Before then, Theus had exhausted his allowed recruiting visits to Pope.

It's the system that one time forced and NMSU coaching staff to decide between buying a change of clothes and a toothbrush for a recruit or breaking NCAA rules. Cartwright said the visiting recruit's luggage had been lost and it was too late in the day to get an NCAA waiver. Fortunately, he said, the luggage arrived and NMSU didn't have to make that choice.

It's a system that, at its core has the NCAA manual. The notoriously dense and ever-expanding book explicitly prohibits, as one might expect, academic fraud. Perhaps not quite as critical is a subsequent section outlawing, in practicality, cream cheese (bagles are OK).

Menzies said he understands why the rule ballooned to what it has become. He said that, decades ago, when rules were more relaxed, some coaches abused them.

"Now we got a document that's unrealistic to adhere to without inadvertently breaking rules," Menzies said.

In an initial move to simplify things, this summer the NCAA relaxed some recruiting contact restrictions for basketball coaches, allowing unlimited calls, texts messages and social media chat to athletes.

"We spend a lot of time monitoring those," Cartwright said. "How important are those (calls)?"

None of that means, however, that secondary violations don't carry some weight.

Conference officials and the NCAA track the numbers of secondary violations. Too many, concentrated in one area, could equate to a major violation, officials said.

Cartwright said NMSU files anywhere from 10-20 reports of secondary violations to the WAC each year.

"We expect there to be some," Cartwright said of secondary violations. "We know that's going to happen."

Matt Burgemeister, a compliance official who left the WAC recently to join the Atlantic Coast Conference said that schools can have "five to 35" such reports in a given year, depending on the size of the athletic department.

The WAC declined to release data on the number of secondary violations each league school committed in 2012.

"We haven't been alarmed at any number," Hurd said.

Burgemeister and Cartwright said there is not any specific number that raises flag and that officials look more for trends and patterns.

Other than that, compliance personnel spend a lot of time on education. Menzies said coaches in the NMSU athletic department take a rules test every year, just to stay sharp.

When it comes to the NCAA manual, Menzies said he gives players "doses of information they can handle."

The goal: To make a institutional community that is aware of the rules and the possible violations.

And when there are additional questions, Cartwright and others are always there to take phone calls.
