Just figured I should mention as I came down pretty hard on Kansas yesterday – at a time when their fan base might be down.\u00a0 So want to make several things clear by going on another ridiculously long rant that probably doesn’t clear anything up.<\/p>\n
I actually have always liked Kansas, and I had a lot of respect for how amazing a coach both Roy Williams and Bill Self have been.\u00a0 They always seem to be a title contender – which is amazing to be in the mix every year.\u00a0 (By the way, not saying that Roy Williams is involved in any of this – just saying that Kansas has had amazing coaches).<\/p>\n
It also might be that this player was involved with the Adidas runner because of another school, and somehow ended up changing his mind and going to Kansas.\u00a0 There are lots of pieces of information that are unknown – and the only public information implicates the player, not the school.<\/p>\n
It also might be that all the schools are guilty of this – everyone does it, and it just happens so far behind the scenes that the NCAA looks the other way.\u00a0 I really hope this isn’t the case, but with all the stories you hear, it is hard not to believe that some of the players are being paid behind the scenes and that it is not isolated to 4-5 schools.<\/p>\n
My problem with what Bill Self said is that the NCAA’s punishment was vindictive for what is a clear violation to the rules.\u00a0 As a Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame basketball coach, he needs to be making statements about how we need a fair playing field and these players being paid by runners and agents is a major problem.\u00a0 He could have said something like De Souza knows what he did was wrong and is really sorry for it, and considering past punishments for this type of violation, two years seems like too much.<\/p>\n
But there is a difference between saying that a violation happened and the punishment doesn’t meet the crime, and saying that the NCAA is being vindictive to a player who didn’t commit a violation (despite a federal case sending people to jail for that non-violation).<\/p>\n
If he believes the players should be paid, he should work behind the scenes with the NCAA to change the rules – I am sure a hall of fame coach would have some weight in that conversation if he approached it correctly.\u00a0 But what is happening with the FBI investigation into college basketball recruiting is a big deal – saying the player did nothing wrong is a horrible message to send.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, it came out in a Yahoo! Sports Exclusive today that LSU’s coach Will Wade is actually on the wire-tap talking to the runner who was sentenced to six months in federal prison discussing an offer about a current recruit and a future recruit.\u00a0 Once again, this makes me sad because I like Wade – he was VCU’s coach for a couple seasons before heading to LSU.<\/p>\n
But it shows why this is a problem.\u00a0 LSU was 10-21 the season before hiring Wade.\u00a0 And in only 2 years Wade\u00a0helped LSU achieve the 17th and 4th best recruiting classes in the country according to 247Sports, and now are 24-5, tied for first place in the SEC and are the #10 team in the country.\u00a0 Pretty amazing turnaround for a program.\u00a0 That is amazing unless the program is paying these top recruits to come to LSU…..<\/p>\n
Another problem is there is a difference between a Yahoo! sports article saying that the FBI has this evidence vs. the evidence has already been revealed in federal court.\u00a0 The FBI has federal charges of bribery being tried in April where Wade and Arizona coach Sean Miller have been subpoenaed to testify.\u00a0 Maybe during that trial, these wiretaps will be officially revealed.<\/p>\n
If the report is correct, the NCAA should be ruling the LSU Tigers are immediately ineligible for the Tournament and Will Wade will no longer be able to coach in college basketball.\u00a0 But I don’t know that the NCAA can act to suspend Wade for wrong-doing\u00a0 and potentially impact whether the federal bribery case can get a fair trial (although I guess can they get a fair trial if Yahoo is reporting evidence that a potential jury pool can see).\u00a0 Maybe\u00a0LSU would step in and do the right thing and suspend Wade and the team.\u00a0 \u00a0I doubt that LSU will do that with the money that is potentially available from the tournament, but stranger things have happened.\u00a0 While I hate to admit it, one of the comments that ex-Louisville coach Rick Pitino said rings true – the NCAA can take away our banners, but they can’t change what happened on the court – we won that National Championship.\u00a0 Hard to do the right thing when winning is so important to everyone….<\/p>\n
In a perfect world, the NCAA would send more of a message – while they might not have enough evidence to stop LSU from playing in this year’s tournament and due process is necessary for such a major claim of breaking the rules, they have enough probable cause to suspend Wade indefinitely until all the evidence plays out.\u00a0 It will be interesting to see what happens.\u00a0 And if that evidence is true, his coaching career should be done.\u00a0 Sadly though, this case will probably drag out for a long time, and we all know NCAA investigations are anything but fast (I think the UNC academic scandal first came to light in 2011 and the investigation ended in 2017 with no punishment…)<\/p>\n
Maybe Self is right – considering academic scandals don’t get a school punished, why should a player be suspended 2 years for taking money.\u00a0 I just hate to think that is right – we have rules for a reason that should be followed.\u00a0 But sadly, the NCAA simply isn’t very consistent with its rulings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just figured I should mention as I came down pretty hard on Kansas yesterday – at a time when their fan base might be down.\u00a0 So want to make several things clear by going on another ridiculously long rant that probably doesn’t clear anything up. I actually have always liked Kansas, and I had a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog2019"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1409"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1412,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409\/revisions\/1412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}