UPDATE: Rich Rodriguez's comments on the committee meeting have been added to the article.

CORRECTION APPENDED: Buckner's previous experiences dealing with the Committee on Infractions have been made clearer.

After self-imposing sanctions for the football program's five major rules violations in May, the Michigan athletic department was hopeful that it would lessen the blow of the NCAA's disciplinary actions when they met three months later.

But according to Michael Buckner, a Florida attorney and expert on such NCAA investigations, the Wolverine contingent in Seattle on Saturday might walk away with additional sanctions levied against the football program.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they added on,” Buckner said. “I think adding on probation wouldn’t be surprising to me, as would any additional practice limits, or reduction of practice time. It also wouldn’t surprise me if they put more limitations on the use of quality control personnel at Michigan.”

Michigan’s self-imposed sanctions already included reducing the quality control staff from five members to three and prevented them from attending games, practices or coach’s meetings, a two-year probation period for the program and docking 130 hours of practice time.

Buckner has consulted with universities such as South Florida and Cincinnati on matters pertaining to NCAA investigations. He has also appeared before the Committee on Infractions for schools such as Stetson and Alabama State. Having had previous experience in front of the Committee, Buckner outlined a few of the questions that Rodriguez will likely face in front of the committee.

“I think it’s going to be a typical NCAA infractions committee hearing," Buckner said in a phone interview with The Michigan Daily. "I think the committee is going to have a lot of questions concerning coach Rodriguez’s knowledge of the rules, his knowledge of what his assistant coaches knew about the quality control personnel."

Buckner also added that Rodriguez's familiarity and questioning of the NCAA's rules could be a contentious issue when he makes his case on Saturday.

“He made some statements a few months ago that the rules aren’t clear concerning the use of quality control personnel," Buckner said. "Well, I disagree with that. I think the rules are very, very clear. They’re going to ask him questions about that. There’s going to be a lot of discussion, questions from the committee to coach Rodriguez about what type of communication goes on between the compliance department and the football staff and how much involvement does coach Rodriguez have in those conversations."

Through Buckner’s own experiences, Michigan’s participation in the hearing will start early in the morning with the University presenting its opening statement, normally delivered by the University's president. Then the Big Ten conference, if present, will be allowed to give an opening statement, followed by Rodriguez. Finally, the enforcement staff will give its opening statement. These usually are around three minutes long, five minutes at the maximum.

Following these statements, each party will present its case in regards to each separate allegation. The committee will respond with questions in relation to each allegation, to which the University's attorneys have been rigorously preparing Rodriguez and the program's staff.

Buckner said that he and Paul Dee, the Chairman of the Committee on Infractions, agree that the NCAA's first allegations almost always takes the most significant amount of time with the committee putting violations such as “failure to monitor” at the end.

“All of those allegations are there because of the underlying violations you talked about earlier in the meeting,” Buckner said.

Michigan's fate in the NCAA violations case isn’t expected to be announced for three to four months after Saturday’s hearing. In fact, Buckner expects a result around November or December, which would be near the end of Rodriguez’s third, and most contentious, year coaching the Wolverines.

For his part, Rodriguez doesn't like the timing of the upcoming hearing.

"We're all looking forward to having this next process, which is this weekend, completed and then when the committee finishes with its conclusion ending that whole thing," Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez said. "It's in the middle of camp, but it's something we have to do.