MIAMI (AP) - Florida International University has been placed on four years probation and its scholarships reduced for multiple rules infractions, NCAA officials said Wednesday.

More than 40 student-athletes who competed for the school from the 2002-03 through the 2006-07 academic years were in violation of rules, said Josephine Potuto, the chairwoman of the NCAA committee on infractions. The school misapplied enrollment and financial aid rules, transfer requirements and eligibility rules, the NCAA investigation found.

The FIU men's basketball program lost one scholarship and its baseball program lost 1.5. The FIU football program was stripped of three scholarships. The committee found the university's compliance did not grow as its athletic programs jumped from NCAA Division I-AA to Division I-A, officials said.

"The institution acknowledges that it was not ready for the move, at least from a compliance standpoint," Potuto said.

In all, 11 sports lost scholarships for the violations, which were self-reported. Records set during the years of the infractions were also erased, and the university's probationary period is scheduled to end May 19, 2012, because the sanctions were added on top of other penalties.

In a statement, school officials said the violations were not intentional.

"Upon discovering these violations, we put in place new compliance procedures that are much more suited to the university FIU has become in the last 10 years," FIU President Modesto A. Maidique said in a statement. "We now have the level of staffing and the redundancies that will prevent these types of infractions from occurring again in the future."

Rick Mello, FIU's former athletic director who was named an associate commissioner with the Sun Belt Conference in December 2006, declined to comment through a Sun Belt spokesman.

The spokesman said Mello did not want to comment on infractions at a member institution.


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