The University of the District of Columbia’s athletics program will be on probation until 2013 for what the National Collegiate Athletic Association described today as “the most egregious lack of institutional control” its infractions committee had ever seen.

A report issued by the committee says a Wild West atmosphere prevailed at the Division II institution, in which NCAA bylaws and forms were ignored wholesale. The committee found that 104 athletes had been given financial aid without meeting eligibility or transfer requirements.

The university let 248 athletes and two prospective athletes practice or compete while they were ineligible from 2000 to 2004, the report says. That ineligibility stemmed from the university’s flouting “a number of longtime, basic rules that should have been easily adhered to,” the report says. The rules included regulations about transfer students and progress requirements.

In one example singled out by the infractions committee, the university gave a basketball prospect free housing at an apartment complex during the 2002-3 academic year, even though he never enrolled.

The university had no policies to carry out NCAA rules, and staff members did not cooperate with the NCAA’s investigation, the report says. The committee also found inaccuracies in statements by university officials to the investigators, including one signed by the university’s president in 2003.

Other penalties, both self-imposed and levied by the NCAA, include canceled seasons for certain sports, a one-year postseason ban on all teams, and a reduction in scholarships and recruiting privileges in some sports. This is the University of the District of Columbia’s second major NCAA infractions case. Its first was in 1991. —Kate Moser