SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) – Notre Dame is investigating whether athletes, including football and basketball players, violated NCAA rules with comments promoting a local sports talk show on a CBS affiliate.

John Heisler, Notre Dame’s senior associate athletic director, said Saturday he became aware of possible violations when contacted Friday by The Journal Gazette of Fort Wayne.

Heisler said the school has not seen the spots, promoting “Sports Dogz” on WSBT-TV in South Bend.

“We’re just trying to figure out what this is,” he said. “I don’t know if we know for sure it’s an NCAA violation.”

Jennifer Kearns, an associate director of public and media relations with the NCAA, told The Journal Gazette that in past situations when an athlete did not know he was breaking an NCAA rule the infraction was deemed a secondary violation.

Telephone messages were left by The Associated Press on Saturday with two NCAA representatives.

Heisler said school officials would ask WSBT-TV to provide copies of the promotions.

Last year USC quarterback Matt Leinart had his eligibility temporarily revoked after appearing in a promotional segment on ESPN. Leinart was reinstated after Southern California petitioned the NCAA. The NCAA said Leinart’s actions were “unintentional and inadvertent.”

Football coach Charlie Weis said Saturday the television spots by the Notre Dame players might be different because the comments weren’t used as promotions outside the program.

Weis, whose team is ranked No. 2 in preseason, said he is depending on Notre Dame’s compliance officer to determine whether any rules were violated.

“I’ll just let them go ahead and deal with it,” he said. “But I feel it will be taken care of very quickly.”

AP-ES-08-19-06 1514EDT