It’s possibly the most crucial department in Wolfpack athletics, and chances are, you have never heard of it.

Ironically, the N.C . State’s Athletics Compliance staff would like to keep it that way.

“If we’re off the radar and minimize the issues we have, then we are doing a great job,” Carrie Doyle, associate athletics director for compliance, said. “It’s kind of like the less you know about us, the better job we are doing.”

And in a day and age where collegiate athletic programs constantly trip over their own shoelaces, the art of abiding by NCAA regulations has become one of the hottest topics in the country.

From Southern Cal to Ohio State, UNC to Miami, national headlines have been recently inundated with phrases like “impermissible benefits,” “undisclosed dealings with agents” and “vacating wins.”

Helping State avoid associating itself with those phrases, Doyle is the head of a five-person staff exclusively dedicated to keeping Pack coaches and student-athletes aware of what they can and can not do. Think staying out of trouble is strictly a matter of common sense? Tell that to the 412-page NCAA compliance manual and Doyle’s aptly named “Mind Map,” which divides bylaws into education, monitoring and the rules themselves. The evolving diagram, which looks like the child of a March Madness bracket and a psychological test to determine if you should be in gifted classes, spearheads State’s organization of compliance.

While the map is only a drop in the compliance bucket, it represents an absolutely critical sector of N.C . State Athletics – while the Carolina football program ends up at NCAA Headquarters in Indianapolis for breaking several rules violations, the compliance department is responsible for educating coaches, student-athletes, parents and boosters so that embarrassment never takes place.

“Every single day, we really work in the weeds of NCAA athletics,” Doyle said. “Unless you actually spend a day or two with us, it’s hard to really describe to people what it is that we do.”

Although she says there is “no normal day” at the office, located in the Weisiger-Brown building, Doyle’s prior experience in the field highlights how she and her staff handle a myriad of violations. Joining State in November of 2010, Doyle worked seven years as a rules violation investigator for the NCAA back in the late 80s and early 90s, bringing experience toward each of the estimated 25 secondary violations that occur at State every year.

“That experience helps me formulate questions to ask, and I understand the process that I need to go through when an allegation comes here,” Doyle said. “If someone is alleging that someone did something improperly or in violation of NCAA rules, I have a fundamental understanding as to how to attack that question.”

One of those questions came up last week when C.J . Leslie, sophomore forward on the men’s basketball team, was suspended for three games after accepting $410 worth of impermissible benefits. For every student who is a die-hard Pack basketball fan, very few can tell you why Leslie received a three-game suspension as opposed to a one-game or seven-game suspension. The answer, which can be self-imposed by the school or handed down by the NCAA, does not stem right out of a rulebook – it all revolves around comparing allegations to past cases.

“When the NCAA gets the case, they are looking for case precedence,” Doyle said. “And what that means is that they are looking at cases over the past two or three years and they are looking for a case that looks similar. They are looking for a similar fact pattern, similar benefits, similar knowledge by the student-athlete; they look for penalties that are similar in nature.”

The NCAA is an organization often harshly criticized for inconsistencies in penalties, but Doyle says there is a common misconception that they are the only ones making and administering the rules.

“The most common misconception is that the NCAA is 300 people who sit in a very tall building in Indianapolis and they make the rules and they tell us what to do,” Doyle said. “Many think those are bad people who couldn’t find consistency if someone handed to them on a silver plate. And that’s not true.

“The people who make the rules, they sit on every single campus. The NCAA is a representative form of governance where one person is sent from each conference to represent the legislative views of that particular conference.”

So State itself votes on rules along with the other 11 ACC schools, and then a conference representative joins over 30 other representatives from other conferences across the country to decide what changes should be made to the rules.

It’s difficult to imagine the complication involved with collegiate athletics legislation and rules violations, but the fact of the matter is incredibly simple – if we don’t turn on ESPN and hear about State breaking rules, there’s a team of people dedicated to making that happen.