For our early 90s NCAA violations, some of the stuff we got hit with included (a) miscalculating the housing allowance for players living off campus and (b) not doing a better job of preventing players from re-selling used textbooks.
For the housing, it was an off-campus situation, so the putting the "rent" on a card (and it is probably able to be processed as a credit card, kinda like when you have a Flexible Spending Account credit card that you can use for medical expenses) is a lot like the first situation, and the "card to be used for school supplies" is a lot like the second situation.
In both cases, UM was found to have (effectively) given "extra benefits". From an NCAA standpoint, I could see the same thing happening with UF (even if it gets handled internally, and does not go to a violations hearing, it is still an NCAA infraction). From a legal/criminal standpoint though, it could get much, much worse for the players.
I still for the life of me and I know I'm old but WTF did UFAG have to go back and pay Best Buy for the stuff if the players had already bought the stuff,had it hand,and were trying to re-sell it.
THAT's the part that confuses the **** out of me.
I would imagine it's this - when a credit card is reported as "stolen", sometimes the charges are reversed or dishonored. Essentially, by UF paying Best Buy in cash, it probably sets up the situation where the players need to repay UF, and then it's just a "cash" issue and has nothing more to do with electronic payment fraud, which is a serious crime.
So in essence UFAG is covering up their CC fraud
In a way. I don't think it's as much a "coverup" (the world knows about it now) as much as it is UF trying to take it out of the criminal courts, and keep it in the "NCAA violation" courts.
UF can "manage" the NCAA, but they don't have much control over the criminal court system.
UF can control the criminal courts much better than they can the NCAA. exactly why fsu told jameis to say he stole the crab legs instead of getting hooked up by an employee. NCAA can make this drag on for a year if they wanted, while UF can get the DA and judge to make it go away quickly