Chase Young takes money from a "family friend" to pay for his girlfriends trip to see him play. I'm not sure if he self reported it or not, but he ultimately paid it back. His punishment? Reduced from 4 games to 2 (~15% of his season).
Yoeli OTOH hires an agent and collects funds for which he pays back. Then self reports everything to the NCAA but they ding him for 9 games (~33% of his season).
Chase Young knew that he was breaking rules when he took out the loan, that's not even debatable. The poorest athletes in the most meaningless sports at any university knows you can't do this, but he did. Yoeli followed all the rules but they ding him on a technicality for a poorly laid out and new process by the NCAA. No sneaking around or knowingly breaking any rules.
How does the NCAA get away with this? Tom should be going off on them right now requesting Yoeli's penalty be dropped or cut in half.
I'm sure dollar amounts are different, and maybe that's playing a part, but the principle matter is one knowingly broke rules vs. the other following them. The punishment should be tied to the intent, not simply the dollar amount.