Saturday Night Recruiting Open Thread: Burning Of Cheatey's Troy Edition

Uko, Woods, Schwab, Grimble, Riley.

Woods is supposedly blazing fast.

It nice that someone else notices that the Emperor is missing a few pieces of clothing, but I think it fails to address three significant points. It mentions them, but it does not analyze them.

First, the article concludes but never explains that just$c* is a “cash cow” to the ncaa. Why does it come to that conclusion? Many here have made that same conclusion and have used the same figure of speech, but no one has ever explained how or why the ncaa should give a crap about how much money just$c* football makes. There are 120 D-1 schools. If that number becomes 119, the incremental loss of overall revenue to the ncaa is negligible. If they somehow decide that they need to have more tribute come in, each of the 120 schools can just raise the price of one product by a dollar or so. I don’t accept the notion that the money generated by the football machine could have been a direct cause of the glacial speed of the ncaa investigation. I just don’t buy it.

The second reason to give the article a C is the author’s suggestion that the delay is waiting for the bu$h depo. Think about that. bu$h is either deposed or he is not deposed. If he is not deposed, then that suggests that there never will be a report. If he is deposed, he either gives testimony that’s helpful to the ncaa (giving direct testimony of first hand knowledge that Cheatie or Garrett had knowledge of all the extra money he got, which I’ll call a confession for shorthand purposes) or he doesn’t. If he confesses, then by definition the ncaa has another piece of evidence. But if he doesn’t confess, then again the suggestion in the article is that there never will be a report – to use the author’s figure of speech, the cops won’t present anything to the jiury.

This obviously pre-supposes that a confession by bu$h is necessary to make the case, but that’s a flawed conclusion. The author himself states that McNair knew about all these extra benefits. McNair’s knowledge is institutional knowledge (unless the fact that he’s an animal abuser negates that somehow) and the ncaa cops don’t need anything more.

In short, to suggest that the ncaa has to wait on the depo is simply nonsense. If the rule is that discipline can come only if there is an admission by a principal player, then enforcement of ncaa rules becomes an honor system, and we all know that the concepts or “just$c” and “honor” are incompatible. For crying out loud, the face of just$c*, or at least its football program is now doing time in prison in Nevada. He still hasn’t confessed to anything.

The bottom line is that the delay cannot under any circumstances be attributed to any need to have the bu$h depo transcript. That’s utter nonsense.

Third, the article touches on but does not go beyond the notion of what just$c* institutionally should have known. Cheatie Petie had first hand knowledge that McSUV was driving a Landrover. The article points out that the just$c* athletic department knew that bu$h was ‘interning" at a sports agent’s office. (We don’t know how much he brought home from that summer job, but I think it’s likely that he got a tad more than minumum wage, just like every other college student.) That’s actual knowledge (and would be all that a reasonable jury would need to impose the death penalty). But what should just$c have known? We know that it has a (pardon the chuckle) “compliance department” because they admit they have one. What does it do? What is its responsibility. Is it a passive report collecting desk, where once a year each kid, coach, agent and booster leaves a piece of paper saying “I didn’t violate any rule, but I won’t sign this under penalty of perjury because my agent told me not to.” It should be pro-active. It should investigate things and look into the lifestyles of players for a money trial or an entourage. Obviously the more likely targets of illegalities (bu$h, Jarrett, Linenart and the like) should be looked at more closely. Alas, the author of the article chose not to expand the “should have known” aspect of his analysis, and I don’t know why. In any event, the “should have known” evidence is overwhelming, and again is more than damning.

The delay by the ncaa could be based on legitimate factors, such as …, well, I can’t think of any legitimate factors. That leaves only illegitimate factors. I really, truly think that the just$c* money machine reaches into the bowels of ncaa galactic headquarters. The individual investigators may well be doing their job diligently and loyally, but somewhere up the line, someone’s vacation home is likely to be getting paid off with currency bearing the smiling face of Cheatie Petie.

One more thing, not really having to do with the article. It seems to me that a “compliance department” should first and foremost NOT NOT NOT report to the athletic director on anyone in that regime. It should report directly to the Chancellor or President. No internal audit department reports to the head of the department it’s auditing. Does anyone know how ours is set up?

Anyway, those are my reasons for applauding the effort but not the analysis.