On Friday evening, FOXSports.com writers Jeff Goodman and Thayer Evans released a story alleging that Bilal Batley, a former staff member at both Memphis and Kentucky, made what the NCAA would consider impermissible contact in the form of cell phone calls to recruits while employed by John Calipari at both programs. The FOX story specifically names former Kentucky star DeMarcus Cousins and class of 2012 recruit L. J. Rose, as well as numerous current and former  players who ended up attending various schools, as  having been contacted by Batley, going back as far as Batley’s time as a graduate manager under Kelvin Sampson at Indiana. As the story explains, only a program’s head coach or three “countable” coaches are allowed to make phone calls to recruits. Batley was not so designated at Indiana, Memphis, or during his six months at Kentucky.

Batley Was Calipari's Director of Basketball Ops/Manager At Memphis and Kentucky

Before last season began, we posted a story about how Batley left his position of Director of Basketball Operations/Manager at Kentucky (the same position he held at Memphis) when it was revealed that he had been involved in a minor rules violation a few months into his job. Batley shagged some rebounds for a player during a brief stop in the practice gym, and his job description did not permit such an interaction. Kentucky self-reported the violation. Nothing came of it, and nothing should have. What we considered odd, though, was that Batley soon afterward announced he was leaving his job in Lexington. He cited an ill family member back in Houston as the reason for his departure, even though his post at Kentucky — a rather plum gig, to be sure — would have been protected by law in the event that it was a first-degree relative who was ill, meaning Batley could have come back to that job if he chose to do so after the family member’s illness had resolved. We assumed that Batley’s reasons were his own and that his hand was not forced, because no link was ever found between Batley’s leaving and the incredibly minor violation. Like the rest of the world, we let the matter rest, and simply hoped everything worked out for the best regarding the illness in Batley’s family.

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By now you have undoubtedly heard about the NCAA suspending Kansas State forward Curtis Kelly for six games for accepting excessive discounts while purchasing clothing. I was all set to go on a rant about it, but apparently Gary Parrish beat me to it with a brilliant column ripping the NCAA for its ridiculous recent decisions on punishing athletes for taking illegal benefits. While Parrish’s column is an amusing read about how the NCAA determines the severity of the infractions, it misses a larger point about how the NCAA goes after players harder than it does coaches or other administrators who run the business of college basketball at the university level.

It could be argued that athletes and coaches/administrators should be treated differently because the former are considered amateurs while the others are working what are, in a sense, traditional paying jobs, but using that alone should not clear the latter of the expectation of maintaining standards similar to what the NCAA expects of its athletes. We cannot even begin to fathom the perks that most big-name coaches get from local stores and restaurants that significantly exceed anything that either Kelly or Jacob Pullen received from Dillard’s. In these situations it isn’t an issue of amateur versus professional, which we already touched upon, but a question of using your position — either as a prominent athlete or coach/administrator — to get benefits that put them in a position that nobody else in the university system can obtain. Those benefits likely get repaid in a variety of ways, including through the giving of free merchandise, or, at the very least, giving them preferential treatment for highly sought-after tickets.

Still, the issue runs deeper than that and in no case made it more clear than that of Bruce Pearl, who has only received a partial suspension from the SEC (the NCAA still has not decided on what to do) and a fairly hefty fine for participating in illegal recruiting activities and lying to NCAA investigators about those illegal doings. Compare that with the situation of Dez Bryant, who last year lost his remaining eligibility for lying to NCAA investigators about his relationship with Deion Sanders even though the NCAA later found that Bryant had done nothing wrong other than lie to investigators about interacting with Sanders in what was a completely permissible way. Several pundits, most notably Jay Bilas and Len Elmore of ESPN, have called for the NCAA to ban Pearl, but the NCAA continues to drag its feet on the decision while it continues to dole out punishments against athletes. The way the system is set up it continues to punish young people between the ages of 18 and 22 who often come from underprivileged backgrounds without significant supervision and it continues to grant leniency on grown men who are making hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars, have college educations, years of real-world experience, and a significant support network behind them. If the NCAA continues its haphazard and uneven application of its bylaws to athletes and coaches, Congress might actually have something worth investigating.

Kansas State announced earlier today that Jacob Pullen, its preseason All-American guard, and Curtis Kelly, its starting forward, would be suspended after being found to have received benefits (clothing) from a local department store. The suspensions were announced prior to the Wildcats’ game against UNLV tonight, leaving the team short-handed against the Rebels, although they are putting forth a strong effort, leading 40-34 early in the 2nd half at the time that this post was published. Pullen has been suspended for three games while the duration of Kelly’s suspension has not been determined yet. Through the first nine games of the season, Pullen is averaging 16.5 PPG, 3.7 RPG, and 3.8 APG, and Kelly is averaging 10.3 PPG and 4.0 RPG.

The details of what they are reported to have received have not been released yet, but it sounds a lot like what happened with LeBron James in high school when he was suspended temporarily for receiving two throwback jerseys in return for posing for pictures to be displayed in a local clothing store. [UPDATE: According to Jeff Goodman it appears that they have gotten a very steep discount similar to what Peter Warrick and Laveranues Coles got at Dillard’s while at FSU.] While we await word from Kansas State on how long Kelly will be suspended, it is worth noting that after tonight’s game the Wildcats have an easy schedule with the two other games of Pullen’s suspension coming against UMKC and North Florida. We don’t expect Pullen to be out any longer than the stated three games, but the Wildcats could theoretically suspend Kelly (or Pullen) for four games and still have them both back in time for the start of Big 12 play when they play Oklahoma State on January 8th.

Michigan State chief Tom Izzo has been put on ice for Saturday’s game against Prairie View A&M because he paid a guy $475 for some coaching help at a summer youth camp — that’s $475 over five days, mind you — and that person is listed as being associated with a possible recruit.

We Ask You -- We Know It's One Game, But Is This Justice?

So, let’s see: Tom Izzo gets busted for a game because he paid someone an honest wage to coach at a youth camp. Cam Newton’s father pimps his son out to at least one school, but Newton is still eligible to play an entire football season. Gotcha.

ESPN’s Andy Katz reports that this was actually finalized on Friday and Izzo got to select which game he sat out, but we still have a question: since the criterion for levying penalties is evidently What Did You Know — or, What Can We Prove You Knew — if Izzo didn’t know that the person he was paying was associated with a prospect, then why the suspension?

Today, the Connecticut men’s basketball program made public its findings and response to the NCAA’s allegations of “major violations” from back in May. The report was submitted to the NCAA on September 7th. Here’s what UConn said that its investigation found:

• Staff members made numerous impermissible text messages and phone calls to recruits,
• The program provided tickets or free admission to games to friends, coaches and other persons associated with recruits, and
• Head coach Jim Calhoun is not guilty of failing to promote an atmosphere of compliance within the program.

The university volunteered the following penalties to its program:

• A period of probation encompassing the academic calendars of 2010-11 and 2011-12 — essentially from now until May 2012, a period of 19 months, and
• Loss of a scholarship for each of those two academic periods.

Calhoun, Connecticut AD Jeff Hathaway, and several university officials will travel to Indianapolis to meet with the NCAA infractions committee. That meeting is scheduled for Friday, October 15th — the first official day of practice. UConn has asked that the meeting be moved to a later date.

Calhoun Didn't Appreciate Being Singled Out By the NCAA.

The NCAA will consider the discussions from that meeting in addition to the 700-page response that contained the above findings and offer a ruling in November or December. Given the NCAA’s recent pledge to supposedly crack down harder on rules violators, the obvious talking point here is whether or not the NCAA will see UConn’s self-imposed punishments as sufficient for the crimes. The early returns from some of the more astute followers of the game indicate that they don’t feel the auto-sanctions will cut it.

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Andy Katz and Dana O’Neil filed a report today that pretty well destroys the argument that Bruce Pearl’s self-described ‘mistake’ in having former Tennessee recruits Josh Selby and Aaron Craft over to his house was a one-time thing.  This new information begs several questions, not least of which is whether this is a modus operandi for Pearl in his usual recruiting strategies, and how many other unknown occurrences might there be?  According to the story:

Kevin Fitzgerald, the compliance director at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee — where Pearl previously coached — confirmed that the university self-reported a violation on Aug. 19, 2004, after “Coach Pearl invited a prospect [and his parents] to his daughter’s graduation party hosted at his house, a violation of 13.05.5.3.”

Pearl Seems to Have a Lot of Secrets

The recruit in question was independently confirmed as 6’9 forward Mike Shachtner, a three-time academic all-american who graduated from Wisconsin-Green Bay in 2009.  Schachtner is currently playing ball overseas and refused to comment for Katz/O’Neil’s story, but it’s fairly clear that if UWM reported it to the NCAA and Pearl later confirmed it today, it happened.  We honestly have no idea if the NCAA will use this information to punish Pearl, and by proxy, UT, for violating the same rule twice (and lying about it the second time — at least we have a better understanding as to the ‘why’ now), but it would seem incredibly difficult to believe the NCAA won’t at least take it into consideration when meting out its punishment.

The other thing that we have to wonder about is whether Tennessee brass were aware of this violation when the school hired Pearl back in 2005.  It’d be astonishing if UT as part of its due diligence failed to request all self-reported violations under Pearl’s tenure at UWM, so we have to assume that they did.  Imagine if Pearl somehow was able to keep that information to himself during his original interviews and subsequent contract negotiations?  Given that Pearl’s existing deal with Tennessee is extremely restrictive in terms of  the elements of “cause” for the program to justify firing him, it would seem to our untrained eyes that if he kept secret that rather relevant information, they would have grounds to void the contract for misrepresentation under false pretense.  A lot of speculation here, but an interesting thought nonetheless.

Pearl Needs to Step Up His Housing Game

No matter what comes out of this, we wonder if anyone else sees the obvious problem here?  Put simply, Pearl needs to trick out his casa a little better.  We now know of three players he was recruiting during their junior years who visited his crib, but none of the three ultimately signed with the guy.  Put in the infinity pool, buy a Bose stereo system for the deck, go for the 66-inch 3D television, offer free iPads to the first hundred visitors if that’s what it takes… because whatever he’s doing when he takes recruits to his house for a short visit isn’t working out too well.

While most of the college basketball world has been focused on the ongoing Enes Kanter saga at Kentucky, the  first real punishment of off-season was handed out today to the Wildcats’ SEC rival in Knoxville where the Tennessee administration determined that Bruce Pearl lied to NCAA investigators about excessive recruiting calls made by the Volunteer coaching staff. According to Pearl’s statement, he lied to NCAA investigators during a meeting they had in June about those phone calls (like Kelvin Sampson at Indiana), but due to overwhelming remorse he came to the Tennessee administration with the truth the following month. Upon hearing these revelations the Tennessee administration decided to take preemptive action, as many programs have, in an attempt to lessen NCAA penalties against them. Along with the usual punishments like decreasing the number of official visits recruits can make and limiting recruiting by the staff, they also took the unusual measures of banning Pearl from recruiting off-campus for a year (from September 24, 2010 through September 23, 2011) and essentially taking back $1.5 million of his salary over the next five years, as well as reducing the salary of three assistant coaches by 25% and banning them from recruiting off-campus for anywhere from three months to one year (official document with penalties here).

While this doesn’t mean that the NCAA won’t take additional action against Tennessee, the move is somewhat refreshing in that a major university has finally gone after a coach’s salary for his egregious errors instead of nebulous concepts like rescinding 1-2 recruiting visits per year, although Pearl won’t be on a street corner begging for money any time soon, as he is still scheduled to collect $1.4 million from coaching in 2011 (plus whatever else he gets from endorsements and speaking engagements). The bigger problem for Tennessee’s program will be the off-campus recruiting ban which should have a marked effect, assuming he doesn’t start racking up the cell phone minutes again (the thing that got him into this mess in the first place). Fans of rival programs are understandably giddy at this news, particularly with Pearl’s reputation as a “snitch,” having turned in Illinois for allegedly paying recruit Deon Thomas (full memos here) while Pearl was an assistant at Iowa. Although the Illini were never found guilty of any wrongdoing related to Thomas, the ensuing investigation led NCAA officials to unearth several other violations that led to recruiting restrictions and a one year postseason ban for the Illini. Since that time, Pearl has carried the negative stigma as a “snitch” around with him and many believe it is what prevented him from getting a prominent job for such a long time. As you can imagine, many fan bases will be more than happy to remind Pearl of his wrongdoing and his penalties when the Volunteers are on the road this season.

After months of waiting for UConn to respond the NCAA’s allegations of eight infractions against the Huskies that were filed in May, UConn finally delivered its report to the NCAA today. Unfortunately, none of us will have a chance to see what UConn’s administration and bevy of defense attorneys could come up with for quite a while (assuming that our readers don’t work for the NCAA). The charges, based on a NCAA investigation stemming from an outstanding piece of investigative journalism by Dan Wetzel and Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports about the recruitment of guard Nate Miles (who played an uninspiring 16 minutes as a Husky), include making hundreds of illegal phone calls and text messages (Kelvin Sampson alert!), giving recruits improper benefits including free tickets, and the failure of Jim Calhoun to ensure compliance within the program. Although we will probably have to wait quite a while for the NCAA to deliver its punishment, some experts are expecting the NCAA to come down hard on the Huskies particularly in light of how hard they came down on USC (the NCAA’s college football cash cow). Under Connecticut state law, UConn has ten days to respond to a request from the Associated Press open records request of a summary of the report and some sources within the UConn administration have suggested that they will likely wait until next week to release that information. According to UConn spokesman Kyle Muncy, the report, which takes up “several three-ring binders,” provided to the NCAA will have to be scrubbed of names and other information covered under state and federal privacy laws before it can be released to the public.

What we will be reading through this fall

As of right now the only heads to have rolled are Beau Archibald, head of basketball operations, and Patrick Sellars, an assistant coach. According to reports, Archibald, Sellars and Calhoun are expected to provide their own individualized responses to the NCAA’s allegations. For the time being the most immediate impact on the UConn program will be their continued difficulty attracting top recruits with a cloud of uncertainty hanging over the program. The Huskies have already lost Maurice Harkless, a 2011 recruit who previously committed to UConn before pulling out and committing to St. John’s, and have lost Ater Majok, who has decided to pursue a pro basketball career in Australia, in a move that some of pointed to as an ominous sign of things to come for the program.

Earlier today the NCAA announced that it was increasing the self-imposed sanctions that Arizona had issued itself back in February for violations that involved former Wildcat coach/legend Lute Olson regarding his association with the Cactus Classic, GoAZCats.com Showdown, and potential recruiting during a “quiet period” in the recruiting calendar. At the time, Arizona put itself on two year post-season probation immediately, took away one scholarship for the class of 2011, and reduced the number of visits that recruits could take to Tucson. Today the NCAA added to those penalties by further reducing the number of on-campus visits that recruits could have, taking away one scholarship for the class of 2012, moving back the probation to start today instead of this past February, and vacating the Wildcats’ 2007-08 season for having two ineligible players. Let’s go through the impact of each of these points one by one:

• Reducing the number of recruit visits: This is the one with the most teeth, theoretically. The NCAA reduced the Wildcats’ number of potential visits from their self-imposed limit of eight and 12 (the max) to six and six over the next two years. I am not deep enough into recruiting to know what impact losing two additional visits this year will do to the program, but the combined impact with losing half their visits the following year could put the Wildcats in a hole with recruits and negatively affect their program for the next few years. Still, it just means that Sean Miller and his recruiting team will have to use those visits more selectively.
• Taking away one additional scholarship: Not a huge deal because this would probably be spent on some second- or third-tier recruit or even a former walk-on as a token of appreciation for carrying everyone’s bags and water for three years.
• Moving back the probation: All this means is that the Wildcats will have to be on their best behavior for an extra five months. The Wildcats will not have to deal with a TV or post-season ban, so it is essentially the NCAA taking a meaningless punitive shot by saying that the punishment starts when they say it starts.
• Vacating the Wildcats’ 2007-08 season: Although the NCAA did not say who the two players were, a little detective work suggests that they are Jamelle Horne and Zane Johnson as they were the only Wildcats on that team who played in the 2006 Cactus Classic. While Horne has had a solid if unspectacular three years at Arizona (Johnson transferred to Hawaii after his sophomore year), we will always remember him for his pair of bone-headed decisions as a sophomore against UAB and USC. As Dana O’Neil noted, the new trend towards vacating wins is essentially meaningless unless it takes away a title (looking at you, Pete Carroll) or moves a team/coach down the all-time rankings. This does neither. In fact, in an ironic twist, this gives Olson the opportunity to stab his long-time assistant turned interim successor Kevin O’Neill in the back one more time as the wins are not taken away from Olson, but instead from the acting head coach at the time (O’Neill) even though it was Olson who committed the wrongdoing. As an added bonus (h/t Dauster) we get to ask the following question: if two teams that never existed played a game, did it really happen?

O'Neill gets the shaft again

What does all this mean? Essentially a whole lot of nothing (or hot air, if you prefer). The Wildcats lose one more scholarship, a few more recruiting visits, are on double-secret probation for a few more months, and have to put another asterisk behind their 25 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances. Given the relatively minor nature of the crime it seems appropriate that the NCAA handed down a relatively minor punishment.

Today Josh Pastner probably feels a little like we do when our mother-in-law catches us glancing at another woman other than our wife.  We know that nothing good will ever come of this, and yet, we also know that there’s about a 99.9999% chance that it will come up ‘accidentally’ in a later mother-daughter conversation with said wife.  So what can you do?  You stew for a while in the hopes that the 0.0001% comes in, only to overhear MiL-so-dear talking to her own mother on the phone about how inconsiderate and horrible of a person/husband you must be, so you decide to take matters into your own hands by telling your spouse before she can get to her.  It doesn’t always work out well — a stern glare, a few harsh words, and another lost chip at the bargaining table — but you take your medicine and slink back to your nesting hole, tail tucked and defeated. 

Part of the Learning Curve for Pastner

Last week Pastner was in Minneapolis on a recruiting trip when he became aware that Golden Gopher forward/headache Trevor Mbakwe was playing in a summer pro-am nearby.  Memphis is recruiting Mbakwe after he was forced to sit out all of 2009-10 at Minnesota due to an assault charge he is facing from his freshman season at Miami-Dade CC, so Pastner went to the gym to watch him play.  Since Mbakwe is still officially on scholarship at Minnesota (he is asking for a release) and the pro-am was an uncertified event, Pastner was in violation of NCAA rules in watching him perform.  In a story from the Pioneer Press on Wednesday, Tubby Smith became aware of this violation, and, still hoping to get Mbakwe to play for him next year, threw young Pastner (who has a reputation for aggresive recruiting)  under the bus. 

“I think they probably misunderstood what the rules were,” Smith said Tuesday. “It might have been miscommunication or something. I don’t know.”

Memphis responded today that the athletic department has already contacted Conference USA and the NCAA about the violation, and that Pastner was completely guiltless in this matter.  The Tiger storyline is that a compliance officer in the UM athletic department approved Pastner’s appearance at the event, and that she had misinterpreted the rules in this case.  Nicole Green was named by Memphis as the party at fault, and color us skeptical, but if a person with several years of experience in compliance makes that kind of mistake, then she is either: a) incompetent, or b) the fall gal.  Either way, Memphis and Josh Pastner probably should look into shoring up that compliance department because the Tigers cannot afford to lose out on talents like Mbakwe over silly violations like this.