Yeah, the same NCAA that knew about coot for croots and turned a blind eye b/c it would have imploded a football program and the resulting shock waves would have shook college football as a whole.
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When has an employed representative of either of those been caught on tape explicitly discussing the violations they personally committed, and still kept their job until the official conclusion of the subsequent investigation? Ole Miss dumped Freeze within days (hours?) of the infamous phone call being uncovered; the equivalent to Wade would be if he'd kept his job another two and a half years until the investigation was concluded and punishments were handed down.
I really think this one might be an unprecedented level of brazenness, at least in any definition of the "modern" era of the NCAA.
Tunsil's was earth-shattering for sure, but he wasn't a committed representative of the accused party at that point, and he was vague about who exactly paid him, leaving plausible deniability intact for the OM staff and administration in place. That's what really puts Wade/LSU on another level - per known evidence, there is no way to spin that he wasn't personally involved and wasn't aware as a formally employed representative of the institution, investigation ongoing or otherwise, yet he's still there and coaching.
I don't mean to argue just for the sake of argument, I'm really just curious if there's a single other instance of a school staying the course with a coach in the face of overwhelmingly damning evidence without a shred of plausible deniability remaining.
I thought Tunsil said a coach paid him?
Auburn is about as bad too. FBI prosecuted a coach so they must have had concrete evidence. With Pearl's history, he should not have survived in my opinion. I agree Wade's may be the worst but people have gotten off with substantial evidence when the NCAA wants that to happen.
While I'll continue to say not as airtight as Wade, Pearl and Auburn was pretty unbelievable to me too in its own way. Mind-blowing that in whatever fall that was a few years ago, the Auburn administration itself announced that Pearl was refusing to cooperate with an internal investigation... and now years have gone by without another word about it.
I think its time to just eliminate the rules against extra benefits. All it does is keep schools like us, who the NCAA will actually go after, scared to do anything while Bama and Georgia are paying elite recruits 6 figures to come play for them and will not even get a second look. I mean you have Chubb apparently getting paid 6 figures just to stay an extra year at Georgia while we go on probation for Will Redmond getting a 2,000 dollar discount on a used car. The whole thing is messed up but it would absolutely be a more fair process if you just let it be open market for these guys. At least then everyone could say they had a fair shot, just got outbid. That's basically what's happening now behind the scenes, at least for the elite recruits, but nobody can really say that out loud.
Or the NCAA grow a pair and really enforce the cheating rules on the books evenly across the board. Give the death penalty to the cheaters. Image Alabama, LSU, Ole Miss, and others hit with the death penalty. That is one way to get them off of our schedule.
Then I woke up, it will never happen due the the amount of money involved - too many people getting paid and I don't mean only the athletes.
What an unholy mess!