Kentucky Basketball: Is USC a Cautionary Tale for Kentucky?

hope you had a good rest! myself & family just got back from sc around 7:30 pm. actually just a few blocks from you in nmb. seen several uk fans at the beach!!

Tipton is a very biased, lazy, quazi-plageristic excuse for a columnist. It is evident to me that he is in a quid pro quo status with this investigator and that would destroy his credibility if he actually had any. The man hasn’t slept for months out of fear he will miss the scoop on the story that will bring Calipari down. He is a joke.

I just had a thought as I was finishing the above paragraph. Maybe Tipton and the HL have hired this guy to catch Coach Cal.

We got hit just as hard in ‘93’ for violations that were unsubstantiated. We were crushing everyone in football, so the NCAA and Pac-10 took us down. SCR#W USC!

Dear NCAA, Cats and Dawgs in Maui. Make it happen! Love ya Tru, you do a great job. For real.

On another note, drop yer socks and grab yer co@ks! It’s gonna be a hot soggy one, folks. All week.

in the Chattanooga Times Free Press…local sports beat writer had these comments. I think many can look at the same issues and see different “facts”. That is both reassuring and troubling as Tru says.

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2010/jun/13/usc-ruling-should-scare-uconn-kentucky-hoops-fans/

The NCAA sanctions handed down to USC have things to say with regard to the Bledsoe controversy. (For some reason I never could read Tipton’s article, if anyone has a link that works I’d appreciate it. To the extent my analysis overlaps Tipton’s article I offer my apologies.)

First and foremost, Compliance Directors need to have an overriding role in the recruiting process. The NCAA report clearly states that Floyd continued to recruit Mayo even after his compliance office told him not to and that "it did so at its own peril.’’

The real issue here is if you have high-profile players, then your enforcement staff has to monitor those students at a higher level," said NCAA Committee on Infractions chair Paul Dee during a teleconference Thursday. “It’s extraordinarily important that you realize the people likely to receive these interactions from outside the institution are also those same people who are going to provide a reward down the road. High-profile players demand high-profile compliance.”

We ‘Cat fans have an extraordinary faith in Sandy Bell’s competence and her ability to insert herself in the recruiting process. However, this belief is supported by little but anecdotal evidence. Calipari/Kentucky are clearly engaged in recruiting 5-star prospects who are vulnerable to the disqualifying influence of agents, runners, financial advisors, and trainers which represent a potential risk to the program. It is clear, in my opinion, (if for no other reason than to build external BNN confidence in the Office of the Athletic Director’s continued commitment to compliance) that Sandy’s role in evaluating and clearing prospects needs to be explicitly formalized to include a restrained administrative veto power over the ability of the program to offer a scholarship. Coaches and ADs are under incredible pressure to win and recruit the thoroughbreds to do it. That powerful circumstance needs to be offset by just as authoritative oversight by an entity largely immune to the enticements to athletic success.

I was also heartened by the fact that former head coach Tim Floyd (or any other basketball coach) emerged unscathed in the NCAA ruling despite having ignored the unequivocal warning of his compliance director. The report makes no mention of a Yahoo! article that claims an informant told the NCAA that Floyd gave Mayo’s handler $1,000. I say “heartened” even though I don’t personally believe for a moment that Floyd didn’t violate rules. The reason I’m encouraged is that it shows the NCAA is not lightly throwing around charges of individual culpability.

The COI’s litmus test for sanctioning an institution, program or coach appears to be a requirement that any charges and levied penalties be able to withstand any subsequent appeal. Without a solid case based on concrete evidence of wrong doing against an individual coach, solid enough to be impervious to any appeal, the COI is unwilling to issue charges or assess penalties. For Kentucky this strongly implies the flimsy allegations against Calipari and the program with regards to the Bledsoe controversy have almost no ability to result in NCAA sanctions.

I think it has been clear for a long time that the size of the institution or athletic program is irrelevant to the COI’s activities. However, there have been numerous claims, supported by circumstantial evidence provided by the treatment accorded the Duke/Magetti and UCLA/Sam Gilbert controversies, that the glamour of a National Championship protects a program from any meaningful NCAA investigation or sanctions. To whatever degree that might have been true in the past, the fact the BCS title game won against Oklahoma in January, 2005 will be vacated means the enforcement field has finally become, if not flat, at least flatter. Granted the BCS championship is not strictly an NCAA title, but I think the willingness of the NCAA to ignore the bling in favor of enforcement is a big step toward insulating itself from the accusations of selective enforcement.

Kentucky fans should not take any comfort from any lengthy period of time that might have passed since the alleged Bledsoe violations and the preliminary NCAA investigation last February. I’m not sure an institution’s window of vulnerability is completely open ended but the time frames associated with the USC violations show the NCAA COI is apparently willing to take as long as it takes to complete an investigation and hand out sanctions. The NCAA obviously wanted to make sure they crossed every ‘T’ and dotted every ‘I’ and didn’t commit some procedural error thereby leaving themselves open to having their findings and sanctions overturned on appeal. The passage of a few months is clearly not a sufficient duration of time for fans to begin to gain confidence that the NCAA has found no reason to issue sanctions ensuing from any controversy.

It’s better to own up and self impose penalties than to wait for the COI to rule and hand out sanctions. Probably nowhere in NCAA institutional memory is there a clearer example of the benefits of confessing violations and self imposing penalties versus engaging in institutional defiance and stonewalling. "The committee was impressed by the [self] imposition of sanctions by the institution,’’ COI chair Paul Dee said in regards to the basketball program. The basketball Trojans removed themselves from the 2009-10 postseason, cut their scholarships, took an assistant basketball coach off the recruiting road, cut 20 days out of their recruiting calendar and released three players from their letters of intent. They took these self-flagellating steps while the football program was busy arrogantly denying everything, defying the NCAA’s right to investigate and attempting to implement a long series of blocking strategies. What I can’t candidly understand is how two such schizophrenic responses to the NCAA could exist on the same campus at the same time. If you need any more proof of a lack of institutional control, this bipolar response to the NCAA investigations has to be damning in and of itself.

The media was the primary source for the underlying facts/evidence in support of the NCAA’s rulings. As we saw with the lack of any initial defense by the majority of Kentucky’s local regional press during the Bledsoe/NYTimes flap over Memorial Day weekend, the press clearly sees its watchdog role as paramount in its relationship with Universities and their sports programs. Despite over 20 years without a significant problem with the NCAA, Kentucky should never expect the benefit of any doubt from the press. This situation suggests there ultimately is no benefit to be gained by attempting to curry goodwill with local press. The fact Calipari has apparently already shifted his primary media relations focus away from local press to building relationships with national media may be a sign he already knew this and I’m just late on the uptake.

These are only a few of the thinks to be learned from the USC conflagration and I sure hope everyone at Kentucky has gone to school on the Trojan troubles. And don’t look for USC to substantially soften the NCAA sanctions on appeal. The chances of a successful appeal is not significantly different from ZERO. “Under new standards, you’re just not going to see penalties overturned,’’ ”http://espn.go.com/blog/CollegeBasketballNation/post/_/id/12350/dont-count-on-usc-winning-an-appeal" >the source said. "It used to be you had to show the penalty was excessive or inappropriate. Now you have to show that the COI abused its discretion. In other words, you have to prove they had an agenda. That’s impossible." The only real defense of a program from the predation of the NCAA is a proactive investigation of prospects with a whole hearted determination to be compliant.

Go ’Cats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1- He says at the end "From Buckner’s experience, decisions based on a thorough investigation of prospects help a school avoid NCAA problems. " while before the article reports:

“So how many schools have hired Buckner to look into a prospect’s past before a program decides to recruit a questionable player?

“None have used me,” he said.

How could anyone use his experience when he has none?

2- The article consisted of a bio of a UL graduate who lived in Louisville for 7 years and who is not from KY. How likely is he that he cares for UK? How likely is he to hate UK? I would tend to believe the latter.

3- If UK was to implement a PI to investigate its recruits, wouldn’t that be considered:
         a- acting without the permission of the student athlete
         b- digging dirt on athletes who would decide to go elsewhere a la Donovan?
         c- turning away potential athletes?

No, Mr. Tipton. Your solution sucks and it is sugar-coated poison you are offering here. If teh problem is with the system, let’s fix it or abolish it. UK alone is not the system. The NCAA is the system.

Regarding the USC parallel, the allegations against Bledsoe had nothing to do with UK, unlike Bush and Mayo who were lavishly living before and after they got to USC.

Finally, I laughed when I read the following: “In 2009, Buckner made history in representing Alabama State in an infractions case. The NCAA Division I Infractions Appeals Committee reduced from five years to three years Alabama State’s probation. Alabama State became the first (and so far only) NCAA member institution to obtain a penalty reduction since the NCAA made appeals more difficult to win in January 2008. Memphis was one of the schools that failed to win such an appeal.”

Even in being an ass wipe, he could not help taking a cheap shot at Cal. Also, what does he mean “Buckner made history?” Shall we put him on a pedestal along with MLK and Neil Armstrong?

Pathetic!