Two Southeastern Conference games took place on Tuesday night. If you’re reading this site, you probably watched one of them. Arkansas beat Kentucky in double-overtime on one of the craziest finishes you’ll ever see. The other game wasn’t nearly as interesting – not in a competitive sense, anyway. Florida beat Georgia, 72-50, to move to 3-0 in conference play and 14-2 overall. The Gators look Final Four-good, and they showed why by thrashing a plucky but overmatched Bulldogs team. It was the kind of beatdown you expect elite clubs to lay on lower-tier outfits like Mark Fox’s group. Ho-hum. The game, however, did provide a reminder of an issue most college hoops fans don’t seem to understand. A few members of Florida’s Rowdy Reptiles student section were wearing white T-shirts with the words “FREE CHRIS WALKER” plastered across the fronts. The students also started a “FREE CHRIS WALKER” chant after the forward came on the court to help officials adjust the net.

It doesn’t look like Chris Walker is going to hit the court anytime soon. (USATSI)

The first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the name Chris Walker is academics. Walker endured an unstable family environment and attended a high school that does not have a long history in putting high-level athletes on an academic path suitable for Division I eligibility. Walker took online classes over the summer and had enough credits by December to be declared academically eligible by the NCAA, and he was admitted into Florida and has practiced with the Gators for about a month. Walker still hasn’t played in a game, but the reason why has nothing to do with academics. Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

The P.J. Hairston saga has all the makings of a classic amateurism bombshell. The shady third-party handler vaguely accused of providing money and/or gifts to a college athlete. A star player from one of the most esteemed college sports brands in the country. A drug charge. A loaded firearm and ammunition found outside of an obscurely rented vehicle. The evidence-based suspicion of broader corruption among program athletes. An apparent academic scandal simmering in the backdrop. The amateurism debate reaching flood stage in the public discourse. A high-profile lawsuit challenging amateurism’s very existence. The convenience of the Johnny Manziel saga. It’s all too timely and salacious and interesting, but here’s the thing: We haven’t even come close to reaching the finish line. Hairston was indefinitely suspended from UNC basketball after being ticketed for speeding on July 28, his third reported traffic citation of the summer, and all charges related to his July 5 traffic stop have been dropped. Hairston won’t be punished by the legal system, but that was never the biggest part of his summer saga, anyway.

The final outcome of the Hairston saga is still unclear (USA Today).

No, the most concerning aspect of Hairston’s malfeasance is the status of his eligibility heading into a season in which North Carolina is expected to compete for a conference championship with the junior expected to shoulder the bulk of the point-producing load and solidify UNC’s otherwise shaky defensive perimeter. He may not be able to do any of that if the NCAA finds the vehicles he drove this summer were rented out to Hairston impermissibly, or if any of his dealings with local party promoter and convicted felon Haydn ‘Fats’ Thomas are deemed in violation of the organization’s confusing (and highly controversial) amateurism rules. More than two months out from the start of the 2013-14 college hoops season, Hairston’s future with the Tar Heels hangs in the balance. His status for the upcoming season is just as mysterious as all the plot twists and legal nuance that brought us to this point.

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The NCAA has taken a pretty solid beating over the past year or two, but the compromised state of college athletics’ governing body did not stop ESPN’s Jay Bilas from helping himself to a few good hacks at the association earlier this week. Oh, and I should add that said hacks were not the kind you would see outside a bar at three in the morning; these were well-reasoned, deserved punches thrown at a group becoming increasingly defined by their hypocrisy.

These Instructions Wouldn’t Have Worked A Few Hours After Jay Bilas Tweeted Them Out, But Look What Randomly Emerges When Searching For “Nerlens Noel” On The NCAA Store’s Site!

You may be best served by simply scrolling back through Bilas’ twitter feed to Tuesday evening, but to paraphrase his discoveries, if you entered the name of a recent college sports star (say Nerlens Noel, or Denard Robinson) in the search bar at shopNCAAsports.com, the site would lead you to a very specific set of results. In the case of Noel, the result was a page full of #3 Kentucky jerseys.  For Robinson, it was a collection of #16 Michigan jerseys that appeared on the screen. Of course, fans are encouraged to buy this memorabilia from the “NCAA store” because they know which players wore these jerseys in real life, but the NCAA’s infamous stance is that they jerseys numbers are random, unattached to any particular student-athlete. In fact, as this USA Today article points out, one of the defendants in the suite of lawsuits pertaining to the NCAA’s use of college athletes’ names and likenesses said in a court filing that “products bearing college athletes’ jersey numbers do not represent actual college athletes.” Hmmmm, then is this a case of a really smart search function, or a really tone deaf NCAA? Well, the NCAA seemed to agree that it was the latter; the search capability was disabled just hours after Bilas fired his first shots.

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Bennet Hayes is an RTC columnist. He can be reached @HoopsTraveler.

The investigative process into the UNC athletic program’s academic scandal may be all the way into year four, but there are still brand new damning details to be found. The latest, and perhaps most damaging, nugget is news that Faculty Council Chairman Jan Boxill offered a last minute rewrite of the council’s report into academic fraud (a report that was sent to the NCAA) in an obvious effort to minimize potential penalties on the athletic program. Email correspondence between other members of the committee revealed a firm disagreement with the final changes submitted by Boxill – alterations that appear to minimize the relationship between those teachers involved in the academic transgressions and the athletic department. While slightly reassuring to know that the rest of the committee was fully committed to fact-finding, this newest revelation is yet another sobering reminder of the lengths some administrators will go to protect their beloved (and lucrative) athletic programs.

There Is More Trouble In Tar Heel Land

After more than three years into the investigation, questions still far outnumber answers. This newest development resonates for a few reasons. As it pertains to UNC, the changes obviously hint at more involvement from the athletic program than we previously suspected. At a time when things were supposed to be winding down with the university making their reparations and finally moving on, it now appears things may be just getting fired up again. Not welcome news for anyone in Chapel Hill. Furthermore, the incompetence of the committee built to figure it all out (most notably the Chairman) certainly does the public image of the school no favors.

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Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

Last time Ben McLemore’s name whirled its way into the national sports consciousness, it was for entirely undesirable reasons. We weren’t talking about McLemore’s immense redshirt freshman season, or his sweet shooting stroke and rising NBA draft stock. We were talking about the NCAA, and the possibility of McLemore leaving Kansas in a scurrilous amateurism-violating lurch after USA Today’s Eric Prisbell brought to light comments from the former Kansas star’s AAU coach detailing his alleged acceptance of money and travel benefits from a purported agent. A web of important questions were raised: did McLemore take impermissible benefits? Did he have even the slightest inkling his AAU coach, Darius Cobb, was receiving money and free trips to Los Angeles behind his back? And if he did, what were the punitive repercussions for Kansas’s proud basketball program? Was the NCAA’s biteless enforcement mechanism unequipped to tackle a situation like this? Would McLemore eventually give his side of the story? Could he even stomach the idea his former AAU coach and friend would take a potentially damning impermissible benefits case to the most widely-circulated newspaper in the country?

More clarity on Cobb and Blackstock’s malfeasance could be on the way if McLemore speaks with the NCAA (Getty Images).

Some of those questions were answered last Thursday at the NBA Draft combine in Chicago, where Sports Illustrated’s Seth Davis got McLemore on the record. McLemore didn’t mince words – the allegations cited in Prisbell’s report are, true or not, completely over his head. “I didn’t see no money going around. My mom hasn’t seen no money going around. We don’t know nothing about it,” McLemore told Davis. “So it was kind of new to me.”

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Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

Maybe the most important question is, “is anyone even the least bit surprised?”

That was the first thought that jostled around my frontal lobe after reading Eric Prisbell’s expose in Saturday’s USA Today detailing St. Louis-area AAU Coach Darius Cobb’s admission to receiving multi-thousand cash payments and free-expenses paid trips in exchange for perceived influence and access to Kansas star and likely top-three NBA draft pick Ben McLemore. Cobb reportedly met with various sports agents and financial advisers looking to steer McLemore to the professional ranks after his redshirt freshman season. Even a cursory knowledge of NCAA protocol would lead you to make the following conclusion without much in the way of deep introspective thought: An investigation of Kansas’, and by extension McLemore’s, alleged impropriety could result in the Jayhawks not only losing their Big 12 title and Sweet Sixteen appearance, but having its entire 2012-13 season expunged from NCAA historical accounting. Everything McLemore touched during his college career could be in danger of sheer obliteration. There would be protest and angst and complaints. It would get ugly.

The NCAA ultimately may not be able to find any wrongdoing on behalf of Kansas or McLemore (Getty Images).

Or maybe it won’t: thanks to some quick analysis on the matter at hand from John Infante, the internet’s resident NCAA bylaw expert and author of the famous Bylaw Blog, a completely blood-free resolution of the case seems entirely plausible, even historically prudent. Kansas can look through the superficial ugliness of its star freshman shooting guard and nefarious AAU-circuit go-betweens and financial impropriety, yearn for a punishment-free future and not feel totally nervous about the whole thing. The NCAA, as is all too often the case in high-profile impermissible benefits cases (and as was made glaringly evident in the resolution of the Lance Thomas jewelry fiasco), has no legal means by which to force Cobb, alleged McLemore-invested runner Rodney Blackstock or even McLemore himself, now that he’s declared for the NBA Draft, to discuss his muddy past. The only looming repercussion is if Cobb or Blackstock qualifies as an “agent,” which could very well be the case under the NCAA’s new expansive definition, or – as Infante details in much greater and clearer nuance – if McLemore is proven to have had knowledge and willing acceptance of Blackstock’s (or whoever else was involved) services.

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Chris Johnson is an RTC columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

The following names are listed as “clients” on the website of Rafaello & Co. Jewelers: Drake, Jay-Z, T-Pain, Lil Wayne, Rihanna, Justin Bieber. I’m barely scratching the surface of the illustrious canon of entertainment superstars and hip-hop moguls associated with the famous New York jeweler, but you get the point. This is not your average knock-off thrift shop. You don’t walk into Rafaello & Co. unless you have some serious cash to splash. So it’s not at all surprising that Lance Thomas, a starting forward on Duke’s 2010 National Championship team and a current member of the New Orleans Hornets, needed nearly $100,000 to purchase a black diamond necklace, a diamond-encrusted watch, a pair of diamond-stud earrings, a diamond cross and a black diamond pendant in the shape of Jesus’ head. No, what’s surprising is how Thomas was able to pony up $30,000 just two days after Duke defeated then-No. 15 Gonzaga at Madison Square Garden, in the midst of the Blue Devils’ title-winning season. And how Thomas was extended a nearly $70,000 loan to complete the glamorous spending spree. Even more puzzling is the fact that Thomas was expected to repay the loan within 15 days, and that Rafaello & Co. waited over two years to file a suit against him demanding he break even on the very credit he sought when he made purchase.

The NCAA will likely investigate Thomas’ involvement in a potential improper benefits scandal, endangering Duke’s 2010 National Championship (Photo credit: AP Photo).

There’s plenty to be resolved here, and it’s far too early to draw conclusions. But unless Thomas somehow managed to accumulate $30,000 (and was expected to raise nearly $70,000 on top of that within the next 15 days) while undergoing one of the more rigorous academic curricula in the nation and, mind you, the added time spent practicing, lifting, studying film and playing basketball at Duke, this situation has the looks of a hanging curve ball, slowly arching its way into the heart of the strike zone, awaiting its bludgeoning from the NCAA’s sanction-laced Louisville Slugger. If college athletics’ ruling body is determined to achieve one mission with its quirky and vaguely byzantine rulebook, it is to sustain the notion of amateurism. Student-athletes are not to use their extra-curricular activities as leverage to obtain financial benefits or other gifts unavailable to non-athletes. Which means Thomas must have received no outside assistance in making a five-figure lump-sum payment at a world-renowned jeweler. He had to have made the money himself. Nor could he have used his status as “Duke forward” to persuade the jeweler into giving him the loan. That’s the baseline assumption we’re making for his innocence. However, if an outside source provided aid when Thomas completed his transaction nearly three years ago, things could get ugly for one of college basketball’s marquee programs and the patron saint that bosses its sidelines.

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Chris Johnson is an RTC columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

Over the next nine weeks, UCLA and Kentucky fans will hold their breaths as the NCAA continues its ongoing investigations of Shabazz Muhammad and Nerlens Noel, the two top players in the incoming Class of 2012. Both players face questions over potential impermissible benefits received during their recruitments. The NCAA has yet to hand down punishment and may never do so unless clear evidence of illicit activity is identified. But the longer both cases remain unresolved, the mere prospect of a lengthy suspension – even if no indication has been given of any type of punishment – is troubling not only for the players themselves, but for their coaches and the programs planning to embrace them this fall (if only for one season). Playing without Muhammad or Noel in any extended context would drastically alter the strategic composition of their respective teams, with either loss holding massive implications for potential league and national championship runs.

Pastner is confident Johnson will behave during his two-year stay at Memphis (Photo credit: Greg Bartram/US Presswire).

While the NCAA explores the recruitments of these two high-profile stars, diligently turning over every rock in an attempt to unearth legitimate evidence of illicit recruiting activity and expending considerable resources in doing so, Memphis on Thursday officially welcomed the newest member of its 2012 recruiting class. Geron Johnson, a highly-touted shooting guard from Dayton and the third member of the Tigers’ class, is eligible to play for the Tigers next season. Johnson is, in short, of questionable character. He has a long history of off-court transgressions, from marijuana charges to an attempted burglary in high school to allegations of stealing another student’s cell phone. Since graduating high school as a top-100 recruit in the Class of 2010, Johnson has been defined as much by criminal misconduct as his talent on the basketball court. After enrolling at two junior collages – Chipola College (FL) and Garden City College (KS), both of which revoked his membership after separate transgressions – Johnson resurfaced on the 2012 recruiting market as one of the greatest risk/reward prospects in recent memory. Does tremendous ability on the basketball court override significant character red flags? Is Johnson worth the trouble? Memphis coach Josh Pastner certainly thought so, to the point where he felt comfortable offering Johnson a scholarship, who promptly fulfilled the school’s academic requirements and gained clearance to play for the Tigers in the upcoming season. There are no potential academic or eligibility roadblocks standing in his way, and the NCAA has no grounds on which to block his immediate enrollment at Memphis. Johnson, bearing  a resume most employers would instinctively reject, will play two years on scholarship, provided his future behavior doesn’t prompt a third consecutive expulsion.

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Chris Johnson is an RTC columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

Every year the NCAA spends copious amounts of time monitoring secondary recruiting violations and doling out corresponding punishments to guilty programs. There are so many menial rule specifications within the organization’s 400-page rulebook and so many different ways to violate those specifications that recruiting has become a walking-on-eggshells process for most programs, with the fear of breaching protocol clouding every conversation, letter and official visit. This is a huge burden for coaches who, more than anything else, are just trying to run their teams in the most successful way possible without getting hung up in minor NCAA rule violations. When basic conversation between coach and prospect carries punitive repercussions, the formula needs wholesale upgrading. The angst and dismay over minor violations isn’t just a coach-player phenomenon. It affects the NCAA and the considerable investigatory work it must do to ensure its legislative scruples are enforced properly. There is a constant game played between coaches unwittingly violating protocol and the NCAA staff policing and dispensing punishment for those violations. Neither side is happy with their current state and yet the cumbersome violation-punishment cycle continues undeterred.

The proposed rule could radically alter the way major programs recruit players, particularly in football and men’s basketball (Photo credit: Darron Cummings/AP Photo).

The violations come in different forms, from impermissible contact with prospects to an overflow of text messages to providing bagels with cream cheese. Chief among NCAA recruiting no-no’s is the illegal use of program personnel outside of the designated coaching circle to contact prospective recruits. Only head coaches and assistant coaches can seek out, evaluate, and contact prospects. It’s a hard-line rule with severe implications: Very few members of each team’s staff are legally permitted to participate in the year-round recruiting process. As the distinction between coach and staff blurs with growing program personnel groups and the recruiting process demands a larger base of scouting resources, monitoring these sorts of violations has become an extremely frustrating process. The NCAA is downright exhausted, and it’s not hard to see why. A rule change is in the works to relieve the violation police work, according to Steve Yanda of the Washington Post, who on Saturday reported that the NCAA Rules Working Group has endorsed legislation that would eliminate the rule limiting recruiting matters to head and assistant coaches. The rule – which, if voted into approval, could go into effect as early as August 2013 – would allow “staff members now known as directors of operations or directors of player personnel to watch film of a prospect or to contact a prospect’s coach or guardian.” The man-to-man aspect of recruiting – official and unofficial campus visits, attending tournaments and events, and so on – would still be off-limits to anyone not considered by job title a head or assistant coach.

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Earlier tonight Marquette announced that it had fired assistant coach Scott Monarch and suspended head coach Buzz Williams for the Big East opener as a result of an investigation into claims that a recruit had been given apparel and provided transportation. An outside investigation found that Monarch had lied (or at least been forthcoming with the appropriate information) when he had been questioned about the incident on several occasions. When Monarch finally admitted his deceit in the middle of June he has been on suspension. Following the investigation Monarch was offered a choice to resign or be fired and he apparently chose the latter.

Buzz Should Have Been Watching The Man Behind Him

From the information that the school has released it appears that Williams’ involvement was limited to being the head coach and one of Monarch’s closest friends, a relationship that likely allowed Monarch to be in the position that he was in at the time although Monarch does have a decent amount of junior college coaching experience. In addition to suspending Williams for the Big East opener for failing to monitor the compliance of his staff the school will also reduce the number of official visits allowed for recruits in the upcoming year.