Quote Originally Posted by HSVDawg View Post
There have been a lot of local radio guys up here in AL asking why the draft night stuff wasn't included in the NOA.

The big question was even if Tunsil didn't talk to the NCAA after draft night, why would it matter if he admitted to being paid by coaches on national TV? Isn't that enough for the NCAA even if they didn't get a formal list of the particulars? The other question is that even if Tunsil didn't talk, the NCAA could still talk to Barney and the other guy from the text messages about what was alleged. In that case, they could only either call Tunsil a liar or admit wrongdoing during an ACTIVE NCAA investigation into his status. There is no in between, and they would be straight up shitcanned and show caused into the stone age if they refused to talk to the NCAA as well.

My personal opinion is that, legally speaking, it is a slippery slope to use any evidence not formally collected by the NCAA as part of the investigative process. OM lawyers would have a field day with that and the NCAA knows it. Thats why I'd be very interested to know Farrarr and the other director of player personnel's answer to the draft night questions were, because they had to have been asked.

I also think its very likely that the draft night debacle implicitly plays into the COI's final decision on penalties, regardless of whether it was included in the NOA. This will affect a lot of Level I's that are argued by OM to be mitigated or standard instead of aggravated, and so on. Never forget that, in spite if all the lawyers and legal arguments that take place behind closed doors before the COI, at the end of the day the NCAA still gets to hand down the penalties it wants. The new matrix structure, while more transparent than thr old system, still gives them a lot of flexibility to shift either way depending on the response and evidence available.
It seems pretty clear that in the past, the COI has punished people on what they thought happened, not necessarily based on what they officially acknowledged as proven. USC was hammered far beyond what the official infractions suggested. I'm not sure if there is back channel communication from the investigators to the COI or if the COI has their own impression of what each school is doing just because they're in the business, but they issue punishments on something other than the official record.