By Libby Sander

The National Collegiate Athletic Association has placed Georgetown University on probation for three years for breaking the association's rules governing financial aid for athletes.

In a report released on Wednesday, the NCAA's Division I Committee on Infractions ruled that coaching staff members in Georgetown's baseball program had misused Federal Work-Study funds by allowing 26 baseball players to receive a total of nearly $62,000 over seven years for work they did not perform.

In addition to imposing the probation, the NCAA has required the university to pay a $61,000 fine and vacate all wins for games that involved the 26 athletes, as well as individual records for athletes and the head coach, Pete Wilk, for those contests.

The university had self-reported the violations and will not appeal the NCAA's ruling.

"We accept responsibility. We accept the NCAA's sanctions, and we're prepared to move forward," Daniel R. Porterfield, Georgetown's interim athletics director, said during a teleconference with reporters.

The NCAA noted that this is Georgetown's first infractions case and that the scope of the violations was narrow. But committee members also said they were troubled by the amount of money involved and the length of time over which the violations occurred.

The baseball players involved earned between $8 and $9 an hour for a variety of tasks at the off-campus baseball facility the university used for its practices and games. They cleaned and removed trash from the field, dugout, and press box; cleaned the locker rooms; and maintained the field, which is not owned by the university.

Assistant coaches were in charge of supervising the athletes' work-study activities, reviewing time cards, and submitting time sheets to the athletics department's business office for payroll processing. From 2000-1 to 2006-7, assistant coaches instructed the athletes to record 20 hours each week on their time cards. They told the athletes they would be given enough work to fulfill those hours, and were not to worry about keeping track of how many hours they actually worked, the report said.

But in many cases, there was not enough work to go around, and those 20 hours were not met.

One assistant coach appeared to consider the athletes entitled to such payments, the report said.

"Although the assistant coach said that he never instructed student-athletes to submit time that would result in their being paid for more hours than they actually worked, it was evident that the assistant coach perceived work-study payments as a financial-aid entitlement for financially needy baseball student-athletes, provided the student-athletes fulfilled the designated assignments and duties," the report says.

Georgetown's president, John J. DeGioia, said in a written statement that the athletes and coaches involved "did not intend to cheat or violate NCAA rules."

The university reported the rules violations to the NCAA last year after an internal investigation. It imposed several additional penalties on itself.

It repaid $61,000 to the U.S. Department of Education to replace the misused federal funds, and froze the number of scholarships available to baseball players. It also created several new policies to more closely monitor the work-study activities of athletes, including one that bars athletes from working for the programs in which they participate.