Report: The NCAA is Investigating the Tennessee Basketball Program

His role in the Deon Thomas recruiting saga 20+ years ago was ultra sleazy.

at the lack of apparent Volunteer response to this news. I saw this last night and checked out RTT and a couple other TN sites and it isn’t even a topic. I swear I can hear crickets echoing over at RTT. I guess I’ve gotten used to the over-the-top response of the BBN at every hint of NCAA activity.

Really looking forward to the in-depth, globe-trotting expose filed by Pete Thamel.

$1.5 million salary reduction for Pearl and 25% reductions for assistants. All are banned from off-campus recruiting for periods of time up to one year. These are serious penalties. Pearl can obviously live with his reduction, but a 25% cut for assistants may change their life styles.

Lying is bad, but I am surprised at what the AD and Prez handed out. If these infractions had been in football, would they have only slapped a few hands?

As big a bite as the Tennessee AD took out of Pearl and his assistants, imo Pearl at the very least deserves it and maybe much more!

If you survey some other websites there is a sense of disbelief at the severity of the penalty self-imposed by the University of Tennessee on Pearl for what is dismissively termed, “making too many phone calls.” The individuals who think this are missing the point.

First, anybody who has been hounded by telemarketers flooding your phone with calls knows that “too many phone calls” is no joke. Top basketball recruits receive many hundreds of voice contacts and text messages a day from dozens of coaches and their staffs, any- and everybody who wants to sway the decision of a prospect. In addition to just giving these basketball prodigies a little peace, the NCAA phone call limitations are intended to level the recruiting field by preventing big schools from swamping the recruiting efforts of small schools through overwhelming application of big recruiting budget resources. So, while it isn’t a violation with a dollar $ign attached to it, as a person who values their down time and privacy in the evenings, to me this violation is not such a small deal even had it been inadvertent.

Second, Pearl admits knowing violation of the NCAA rules regarding phone calls. It isn’t a matter of an assistant coach just accidently calling a prospect too many times; Pearl himself apparently enlisted his staff to set up a whole circumvention procedure, a scheme, for switching over to unauthorized phones for contacting recruits when the limit of permissible calls on authorized phones had been reached. This act takes the nature of the infraction (too many phone calls) and boosts it well out of the realm of a secondary ‘oops’ and puts it in the major violation category with multiple actors intentionally breaking NCAA recruiting regs.

Third, Pearl and his assistants compounded their NCAA crime by lying to NCAA investigators who were making inquiries that evolved from their efforts to examine potential infractions by the Tennessee football program. Pearl had a chance to come clean and opted for dissimilitude and concealment of his actions.

Sometime later, Pearl went to his AD, made an admission, plead contrition, and threw himself on the mercy of the University of Tennessee powers that be. At this point, many are apparently tempted to believe this confession shows a mitigating integrity, a strength of character which wasn’t evident before.

However, my understanding is that Pearl didn’t come forward until he had become aware that the NCAA had obtained Kansas basketball recruit Josh Shelby’s phone records as part of their examination of his own eligibility questions. Shelby’s phone records showed unreported calls from Pearl and his assistants from unauthorized phones prior to his commitment to Kansas. Rather than a display of conscience and contrition, this confession was instead an apparent action intended to preempt the NCAA’s revelation of his misdeeds and by doing so gain some small amount of moral high ground from which to plea bargain the consequences down to a level that might allow him to still be viewed with some public semblance of integrity (however small) and keep his multi-million dollar job (however diminished).

So, let’s see, Pearl broke recruiting rules; he intentionally broke those rules on recruiting and enlisted others into his scheme for violating the rules; he contrived a cover-up by lying when questioned about the recruiting violations and caused others to perpetuate the cover-up when they were questioned; and, finally, he only came forward, confessed and displayed contrition when he had been caught by the NCAA to try and save himself to the extent possible from the probable penalties should he wait for the certain revelation by the NCAA of his scheme in the face of his denials.

Yeah, I think he may have gotten off lightly. If you think otherwise, I invite you to share Ken Howlett’s above visualization of what the consequences would likely be should this sports crime have occurred in Lexington, Kentucky with Calipari.

couldn’t happen to a better guy. It’s just a damn shame Lane Kiffin didn’t stay at UT. The Vols led the NCAA in coach buffoonery with both Kiffin and Pearl.

 will probably be the only real casualty here, between the Kiffen deal and this, which they apparently knew of for quite some time, will make him the target of even more booster hatred. I have to sit here in Nashville and listen to almost daily vilification of Cal and UK by a guy Matt Jones slaughtered in an impromptu debate on the radio, and though I find no joy in any SEC team getting this kind of attention, there is a bit of guilty pleasure in this whole affair. The UT fan base will still love Pearl.