Post by less1brain on Jun 29, 2021 17:44:02 GMT -8
www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/31732629/ncaa-gives-tcu-horned-frogs-three-years-probation-former-assistant-coach
Basically, the IARP is taking the cases in order of severity, I think, with one exception: Kansas.
The Kansas case is interesting because in theory it shouldn't be with the IARP. The Kansas case was simple: Kansas used an ineligible player. The player paid back the money and and the assistant was fired. The player was cleared to play by the NCAA for the rest of the year.
The problem is, the rules changed, as every school including Kansas agreed that for every violation, the penalty would become more severe: A Level 3 violation now gets punished like a Level 2 violation, a Level 2 violation now gets punished like a Level 1 violation, and now I guess there's certain things that get you possibly straight to the death penalty.
After stuff came out about the assistant and the player (and other recruits who didn't go to Kansas) in the FBI trials, the NCAA levied new penalties against Kansas, including making them forfeit the money for the games that same player (Billy Preston) played in and putting Kansas on one-year probation.
Kansas cried foul and appealed to the IARP. I definitely think the NCAA Enforcement staff was wrong to penalize Kansas for playing a player they themselves cleared to play. Ex-post facto.
At the same time, other violations occurred and the 1 year of probation is for a failure to monitor the program by Bill Self. That is what is supposed to happen under the new rules that Kansas voted to approve.
I assume the IARP will rescind the forfeiture of monies and will keep the probation. I doubt they will punish Kansas for appealing to the IARP since on least the money issue Kansas was right. But Kansas really shouldn't have appealed its own vote.
So, now we have Louisville, Arizona, LSU, NC State and Auburn.
Louisville acted very proactively. They fired Rick Pitino and two of his assistants before the NCAA even investigated them. They forfeited all of the money they'd gotten for the past year (it might've been two), dinged themselves 3 scholarships and gave themselves a postseason ban before the pandemic began. They were clearly going to make the NCAA Tournament that year if there'd been one. So, I don't think they're going to get smashed too hard. Maybe probation for a certain time. And those assistants could get a show cause ban. The question is whether Pitino, currently employed, will get one.
NC State is all about Dennis Smith.
Auburn is about fired ex-coach's Chuck Person's violations. He was fired, but the school didn't impose any penalties on itself. They did hold out two players. Both were later declared ineligible for the rest of the year by the NCAA, but cleared to play for the remainder of their careers after money was repaid. They both finished their careers at Auburn and Austin Wiley was playing in Europe when the pandemic hit.
The elephants in the room are Arizona and LSU: Sean Miller & staff and Will Wade & staff.
The Arizona case will be a difficult one to resolve in some aspects: How do you impose scholarship restrictions on a new coach will almost all new players?
But I think Arizona's one season post-season ban at a time when many people assumed there wouldn't be an NCAA Tournament in a year where Arizona wasn't going to make the NCAA Tournament is going to stay the beatdown. They played two ineligible players for 3 years. One coach was sentenced to jail. Another assistant was fired for recruiting violations. The third, Josh Pasternack, resigned after committing violations and got hired by UCSB and was given a show-cause ban, but JP (the school stayed out of it) convinced a silly Central District Court that the show cause ban violated the antitrust laws because the NCAA was using its monopoly power to deprive JP of his right to make a livelihood at his chosen profession...
Um, JP can coach in the NAIA, two-year schools, the G League, the NBA and in many countries overseas if he doesn't like having to follow NCAA rules. The NCAA has appealed that decision and because of the pandemic, we won't know the outcome for years as it will likely go all the way to the SCOTUS. My guess is, JP will lose that suit and UCSB is going to be in deep doo-doo unless Brett Kavanaugh's view that schools should be allowed to pay players salaries and other benefits beyond exploiting their NIL rights is okay and was always okay years before the SCOTUS issues its decision.
I don't think Brett will win on that point. Clarence Thomas will certainly gladly vote with the 9-0 court on this one in favor of the NCAA unless JP's lawyers are allowed to produce new evidence showing a pattern of selective enforcement, but since they didn't present that argument or evidence at the trial level I'm really, really sure it won't come up before the SCOTUS.
The charges against Arizona include failing to cooperate with the NCAA Investigation, witness-tampering to try to persuade Book Richardson to lie to the NCAA, paying a law firm to do a fake investigation to cover things up, and according to various sources some materials from the FBI not introduced at trial that Sean Miller was personally paying players not named DeAndre Ayton or offered players money not named Ayton who went somewhere else. Plus, there's Dawkins' recorded conversation where Richardson told him that Miller was paying Ayton.
Given that the school's AD and President were planning to negotiate a contract extension with Miller and it was the Board of Trustees who put the kibosh on that, which led to Miller's ouster, I don't see how Arizona escapes getting stomped on this one. The President and AD are still in place; the AD has one more year to go on his contract.
My non-existent ESP: Miller will get a show-cause ban of 7 years (the maximum). And I suspect Arizona will be banned for at least one more postseason, possibly two, which might cause certain players who decided to stick with the program to leave (Mathurin and any foreign players might go overseas; Dalen Terry might stay if the ban is just for one more year). And they'll get 5 years probation. And possibly if some players leave so Lloyd has only 10 players, he might get stuck with having not more than 10 players for 2 more years.
Speaking of Auburn, the current coach is Bruce Pearl. He got a 3-year show-cause ban in 2011 after Tennessee fired him. Person was the Associate Head Coach. So, the Auburn case could be more interesting given Pearl's history at Tennessee and what, if anything, occurred during Auburn's internal investigation and the NCAA's investigation...
With matters opening up as the pandemic recedes, I expect to see all of the remaining cases resolved fairly quickly (they're not working on them one at a time, they're announcing the final decisions one at a time).
Basically, the IARP is taking the cases in order of severity, I think, with one exception: Kansas.
The Kansas case is interesting because in theory it shouldn't be with the IARP. The Kansas case was simple: Kansas used an ineligible player. The player paid back the money and and the assistant was fired. The player was cleared to play by the NCAA for the rest of the year.
The problem is, the rules changed, as every school including Kansas agreed that for every violation, the penalty would become more severe: A Level 3 violation now gets punished like a Level 2 violation, a Level 2 violation now gets punished like a Level 1 violation, and now I guess there's certain things that get you possibly straight to the death penalty.
After stuff came out about the assistant and the player (and other recruits who didn't go to Kansas) in the FBI trials, the NCAA levied new penalties against Kansas, including making them forfeit the money for the games that same player (Billy Preston) played in and putting Kansas on one-year probation.
Kansas cried foul and appealed to the IARP. I definitely think the NCAA Enforcement staff was wrong to penalize Kansas for playing a player they themselves cleared to play. Ex-post facto.
At the same time, other violations occurred and the 1 year of probation is for a failure to monitor the program by Bill Self. That is what is supposed to happen under the new rules that Kansas voted to approve.
I assume the IARP will rescind the forfeiture of monies and will keep the probation. I doubt they will punish Kansas for appealing to the IARP since on least the money issue Kansas was right. But Kansas really shouldn't have appealed its own vote.
So, now we have Louisville, Arizona, LSU, NC State and Auburn.
Louisville acted very proactively. They fired Rick Pitino and two of his assistants before the NCAA even investigated them. They forfeited all of the money they'd gotten for the past year (it might've been two), dinged themselves 3 scholarships and gave themselves a postseason ban before the pandemic began. They were clearly going to make the NCAA Tournament that year if there'd been one. So, I don't think they're going to get smashed too hard. Maybe probation for a certain time. And those assistants could get a show cause ban. The question is whether Pitino, currently employed, will get one.
NC State is all about Dennis Smith.
Auburn is about fired ex-coach's Chuck Person's violations. He was fired, but the school didn't impose any penalties on itself. They did hold out two players. Both were later declared ineligible for the rest of the year by the NCAA, but cleared to play for the remainder of their careers after money was repaid. They both finished their careers at Auburn and Austin Wiley was playing in Europe when the pandemic hit.
The elephants in the room are Arizona and LSU: Sean Miller & staff and Will Wade & staff.
The Arizona case will be a difficult one to resolve in some aspects: How do you impose scholarship restrictions on a new coach will almost all new players?
But I think Arizona's one season post-season ban at a time when many people assumed there wouldn't be an NCAA Tournament in a year where Arizona wasn't going to make the NCAA Tournament is going to stay the beatdown. They played two ineligible players for 3 years. One coach was sentenced to jail. Another assistant was fired for recruiting violations. The third, Josh Pasternack, resigned after committing violations and got hired by UCSB and was given a show-cause ban, but JP (the school stayed out of it) convinced a silly Central District Court that the show cause ban violated the antitrust laws because the NCAA was using its monopoly power to deprive JP of his right to make a livelihood at his chosen profession...
Um, JP can coach in the NAIA, two-year schools, the G League, the NBA and in many countries overseas if he doesn't like having to follow NCAA rules. The NCAA has appealed that decision and because of the pandemic, we won't know the outcome for years as it will likely go all the way to the SCOTUS. My guess is, JP will lose that suit and UCSB is going to be in deep doo-doo unless Brett Kavanaugh's view that schools should be allowed to pay players salaries and other benefits beyond exploiting their NIL rights is okay and was always okay years before the SCOTUS issues its decision.
I don't think Brett will win on that point. Clarence Thomas will certainly gladly vote with the 9-0 court on this one in favor of the NCAA unless JP's lawyers are allowed to produce new evidence showing a pattern of selective enforcement, but since they didn't present that argument or evidence at the trial level I'm really, really sure it won't come up before the SCOTUS.
The charges against Arizona include failing to cooperate with the NCAA Investigation, witness-tampering to try to persuade Book Richardson to lie to the NCAA, paying a law firm to do a fake investigation to cover things up, and according to various sources some materials from the FBI not introduced at trial that Sean Miller was personally paying players not named DeAndre Ayton or offered players money not named Ayton who went somewhere else. Plus, there's Dawkins' recorded conversation where Richardson told him that Miller was paying Ayton.
Given that the school's AD and President were planning to negotiate a contract extension with Miller and it was the Board of Trustees who put the kibosh on that, which led to Miller's ouster, I don't see how Arizona escapes getting stomped on this one. The President and AD are still in place; the AD has one more year to go on his contract.
My non-existent ESP: Miller will get a show-cause ban of 7 years (the maximum). And I suspect Arizona will be banned for at least one more postseason, possibly two, which might cause certain players who decided to stick with the program to leave (Mathurin and any foreign players might go overseas; Dalen Terry might stay if the ban is just for one more year). And they'll get 5 years probation. And possibly if some players leave so Lloyd has only 10 players, he might get stuck with having not more than 10 players for 2 more years.
Speaking of Auburn, the current coach is Bruce Pearl. He got a 3-year show-cause ban in 2011 after Tennessee fired him. Person was the Associate Head Coach. So, the Auburn case could be more interesting given Pearl's history at Tennessee and what, if anything, occurred during Auburn's internal investigation and the NCAA's investigation...
With matters opening up as the pandemic recedes, I expect to see all of the remaining cases resolved fairly quickly (they're not working on them one at a time, they're announcing the final decisions one at a time).