Methinks someone is getting a liiiiiittle too specific with their social networking policy (such a thing exists?).

Indeed.  The University of Oklahoma, still smarting from probation based on impermissible phone calls by Kelvin Sampson and a pay-for-play scandal involving bogus jobs (not to mention former Sooner Josh Jarboe’s profane riffs on existentialism), has released records of its new social networking policy, which endeavors to outline exactly the kinds of news feed updates, photo montages and tweets that, as student-athletes, are not in the best interests of the Sooner Nation.  Specifically, from the AP:

[A]thletes are warned that their postings must comply with a code of conduct and can be punishable with education, counseling, suspension or expulsion and with the reduction or cancellation of financial aid. It warns athletes not to post pictures that would portray them negatively nor post contact information that agents or their runners could use to put the athletes’ eligibility in jeopardy.  “‘Partying,’ ‘drinking,’ and ‘getting wasted’ do not qualify as real hobbies or interests,” the policy warns.

We’ve yet to see the entire document of prohibitions, but hopefully the OU compliance folks managed to capture some of the other necessary guidelines to avoid the ignominy of NCAA gumshoes once again sniffing around Norman:

• do not wear a dress ten sizes too small (Blake Griffin)
• do not publicly refer to the NCAA as the National Communists Against Athletes (Brian Bosworth)
• do not shoot teammates, rob the coach’s house, distribute controlled substances to the FBI or gang-rape coeds (Switzer’s crew)
• do not pick up the phone if a coach is indiscriminately calling you whenever he damn well pleases (Kelvin Sampson)

That should do it.  There are undoubtedly more, but these will get the Sooner Nation started.

Tom Crean should be proud of his Indiana team this year – despite basically playing with D2 talent, the Hoosiers have used grit and hustle to compete in nearly every Big Ten game, even winning one against Iowa a few weeks ago.  Furthermore, the stench of impropriety and illicit activity that enveloped Bloomington during the tenure of Kelvin Sanctions is finally, like a soupy fog lingering to mid-day, starting to lift.  As a result, the phone lines at the athletic department are free and clear; nobody is hiding under their desks trying to, um, get a signal (yeah, that’s you, Senderoff). 

What’s that? 

Please Pick Me Up and Call a Recruit

Oh, maybe the stink hasn’t quite dissipated after all.  Perhaps there’s something about the phones in that place that is so magnificent… so wonderful… so awe-inspiring, that coaches just can’t resist the siren-like urge to pick it up and call someone.  Someone like, oh we dunno, just thinking out loud here, maybe… a recruit!  From the Indy Star:

Indiana University reported a secondary NCAA violation involving what the school said was an inadvertent extra phone call by the men’s basketball staff to recruit Bawa Muniru in October.  IU punished itself by not making any recruiting phone calls for a week in December, according to the report, revealed through a public records request by The Indianapolis Star.

Rumors and Rants had an excellent set of suggestions for the Indiana coaching brass, seeing as how they have loads of trouble getting all these confounding phone rules right (i.e., two calls per week, fellas).  Here are their best two recommendations:

The smoke signal: This is one of the oldest forms of communication known to man, dating back to ancient China, and it’s particularly useful for long distances. The smoke signal will be most effective when courting in-state recruits in places like Indianapolis, Richmond and Terre Haute.

The heliograph: Here’s another one where knowing Morse Code will come in handy. A heliograph was standard issue in the British and Australian armies until the 1960s, and involves using a flashes of sunlight to convey Morse Code with, basically, a mirror. It works, according to Wikipedia, to 50 kilometers or more, which is perfect if you want to get in touch with a player while recruiting in Canada or Europe.

Agreed.  Nothing says Ironic Indiana U. basketball like using smoke signals to communicate with each other.  Right, Eric?

Gary Parrish had an interesting story today about an incoming Tennessee recruit named Renaldo Woolridge, a 6’8 top 100 power forward from Southern California who has an impressive bloodline – his dad happens to be former Notre Dame All-American (1981) and longtime NBA journeyman, Orlando Woolridge.

(photo credit:  MySpace)

The story goes into considerable detail as to the younger Woolridge’s burgeoning rap career, replete with the obligatory MySpace page and stage-friendly moniker, The Answer aka Swiperboy.  And yeah, we agree with Parrish when he says that it’s obvious after listening to the tracks that this kid has a little more talent than your average hoopster/rapper wannabe.

What really piqued our interest, though, was when we listened to the song, “Baller Vol,” which quite clearly pays homage to Woolridge’s new school and teammates (listen below).  We may not have caught them all, but we heard players Scotty Hopson, Wayne Chism, Tyler Smith, JP Prince and coach Bruce Pearl mentioned.

Not to be a total wet blanket here, because this seems like just a kid having some fun – Woolridge even mentioned that UT may use his track for player introductions this year – but how is this not an NCAA violation?  Wouldn’t Wooldridge’s production company, Swiperboyz Entertainment, be considered a commercial enterprise?  And if so, aren’t there fairly explicit rules as to the limitations or usage of the university’s logo and likeness?  For example, look at Rule 12.5.1.3(c) from the NCAA Rules & Regulations:

But on Woolridge’s MySpace site, it’s obvious that he’s a Vol and even includes a conspicuous image of him flexing while wearing a UT jersey.

(ed. note – this picture has since been removed from Woolridge’s MySpace page.  Coincidence?  photo credit: MySpace)

And what about the shout-outs to all of his current teammates on the song?  Per Rule 12.5.2.2, did Woolridge get express permission to use their names on his product, and if not, does it matter that UT probably hasn’t taken steps to remediate that likely omission?

Given what we wrote last week about the NCAA’s worthless investigative arm, none of this probably matters because there are bigger fish for the brass to fry at Prairie View and UC Davis, but coming from someone who remembers how Indiana’s Steve Alford found himself in hot water for simply doing a charity calendar photo two decades ago, we have to wonder how all of Woolridge’s UT-centric rapping reconciles with the NCAA’s rulebook.

Seems Sir Charles was right after all.  Somehow this wonderfully crafted piece by Dan Wetzel at YahooSports got past us for nearly a week before we found it.  Wetzel essentially fires a Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US shot across the bow of the Good Ship NCAA, led by Capt. Myles Brand, for its notably lax invisible investigation and enforcement of NCAA rules among its two revenue cash cow sports, football and basketball.

Doing some solid investigative work himself, Wetzel concludes that it’s been nearly two years since a major college basketball program was hit with a significant violation (Kansas with Ol’ Roy’s largesse in Oct 2006), which is the longest such drought in almost a half-century.  Similarly, it’s been fifteen clean months in college football since the last major violation (Oklahoma in July 2007).  So the reasonable conclusion here is that the NCAA has cleaned up its high-profile sports to the point where schools are by and large playing by the rules, right?  Right?

Wetzel has a slightly different take:

The NCAA has expanded its staff of investigators (its cops) to an all-time high of 20. It now has its infractions committee (its judge and jury) meet as often as seven times per year. Still, it hasn’t been this feeble at catching crooks since a 16-month stretch ending in 1962. Back then, it had one investigator. […] It never has been so obvious the NCAA is protecting its big-time programs and television money.  It’s gotten to the point where Jerry Tarkanian’s legendary line about the NCAA’s selective enforcement habits – “the NCAA was so mad at Kentucky, it gave Cleveland State two more years of probation” – has become outdated.  These days the NCAA doesn’t even get mad at Kentucky.

Wetzel goes on to describe just how toothless the NCAA investigations staff has become in recent years despite its recent expansion.  Apparently they’re still quite excellent at catching small-school hopscotch coaches who have the audacity to text recruits outside of the mandated contact periods (check the below list from 2008).  But when it comes to the power conference schools who have big money, big boosters, big media and drive the whole ship into port for the NCAA coffers, the investigators are largely missing. 

What a joke.  We harkened back to this problem when the OJ Mayo allegations came out last spring.  With a notorious character like Rodney Guillory hanging around the USC program, how could the NCAA and the LA media have so completely missed it?  We’ll buy the fact that newspapers don’t have the proper resources to perform comprehensive investigative journalism while entire newsrooms are shuttering, but the NCAA still has no excuse.  Especially when we look at the above list and see what those twenty investigators have been so diligently working on for the past nine months.

We made reference yesterday to coaches like Billy Gillispie finding the grey areas of the NCAA rulebook and making those in charge make decisions.  With what Wetzel has shown us, we ask, why even bother with the gray areas?  Why not just start funnelling booster money directly to recruits instead of worrying about impressing them with big extravaganza weekends?  Make it truly an arms race where the most-moneyed always win.  Then at least we can all walk away from the stench without lying to ourselves as to what’s causing it. 

You really gotta love FOIA.  It allows regular folks access to primary and secondary sources that we otherwise would only hear about through reporters, and who knows if those bozos can be trusted to get it right.  (ed. note: we realize of course that the AP in this case submitted the FOIA request; the point here is meant to be that we don’t have to trust what the AP reporters said about the docs, we can look at them ourselves and draw our own conclusions)

Using FOIA, today the AP released Indiana’s response to the NCAA on the allegation that the school failed to monitor Kelvin Sampson and his staff given his ample history of playing a little loosey-goosey with phone calls to recruits.  From the Hoosier Scoop:

Most of what the university’s lawyers state is this letter is reiteration, often with greater evidence or a different emphasis. There’s not a lot of new news.  The executive summary of primary arguments, found on page four, does its job nicely. Both because it outlines IU’s argument and captures the general tenor of the response: just because we didn’t find the calls right away doesn’t mean we weren’t monitoring and . . . Please believe us!  IU states that it’s compliance measures far exceeded those of similar institutions, and that only four of the impermissible calls could have been caught by those measures (even though they eventually were caught by an intern, a fact IU puffs its chest about repeatedly.) The rest of the calls, it claims, were purposefully hidden by the coaches, and would have evaded even the most stringent monitoring efforts.  That’s really the crux of the argument.  As it has been for some time.

Classic CYA here.  It wasn’t our fault, it was all the guy’s fault who we threw under the bus and who is no longer accountable to us!  We did our best but he and his minions were simply too nefarious in their evil dealings! 

The docs:

• IU’s Response
• Exhibits Part 1
• Exhibits Part 2

Quickly looking through some of the exhibits, two things came to mind.  First, when ripping someone at another school by using quotes to discredit their statements, you might want to remember that all emails at a public university are subject to public disclosure.  Hello, Jennifer Hooker Brinegar!  We’re assuming that Oklahoma’s Melanie Roberts is off this year’s Xmas card list.  (see exh. 2, #33)  Secondly, look at the names (see exh. 1, #29)  of the recruits who Sampson and his staff used up all their phone violations on – Bud Mackey (prison), DeJuan Blair (PIttsburgh), Robbie Hummell (Purdue), Demetri McCarney (Illinois) – not a one ended up at Indiana.  Talk about zero return on your investment!

If nothing else, this long Hoosier nightmare appears to be finally reaching an end.  Whether IU gets additionally screwed or not is up to the NCAA brass, but really, how much worse could they be in 2008-09?  Isn’t Kyle Taber and crew punishment enough?

Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball is the RTC Big 12 correspondent and an occasional contributor. 

In the storied not so storied history of Nebraska basketball established in 1897, the program has never won an NCAA Tournament game.  However, Nebraska coach Doc Sadler is doing almost anything he can to get players that might get them the opportunity, and it appears his tactics might be pushing closer and closer to a recruiting violation.

What’s Up, Doc?

The latest case is Jorge Diaz, a 7 foot prospect that played most recently on the Puerto Rico Junior National team.  Diaz is still an oral commitment to Nebraska, but he has not been enrolled in school and did not sign a letter of intent.  Apparently he has been cleared by the NCAA Clearinghouse, but has not been able to enroll at Nebraska because he hasn’t met their enrollment standards.  The thing holding things up is a checkmark in his application to Nebraska about English not being his first language and he didn’t take a required test to verify he was proficient in English.  But as this gets more and more involved and school officials have started commenting on things, it gets about as close as it can to a recruiting violation. Check this timeline: 

August 29 – the Omaha World Herald Newspaper has been aggressively printing stories on the recruitment of this player.  They start out by mentioning that Diaz’s enrollment was held up because of his English proficiency and point out that “Husker coaches can’t comment on Diaz until he is enrolled.”  He had until Tuesday, 9/2 to enroll at Nebraska

September 3 – The next day after the deadline, the Omaha World Herald published another article updating the Diaz situation, stating that he is still not enrolled at Nebraska yet but printed that AD Tom Osborne and Coach Doc Sadler said that they are “still actively recruiting Diaz.” 

September 4 – the paper published even another article on the Diaz situation saying that Nebraska is re-recruiting Diaz since he was not able to enroll for this semester and the earliest he could enroll now at Nebraska would be after the first semester.  However, the paper quotes Coach Sadler that he is “aggressively” trying to re-recruit the center and is also quoted, “Hopefully, Jorge will get what he has to get done to be admitted to school.”  Tom Shatel from the OWH also wrote an editorial published that day on the Diaz situation.   

The Lincoln Journal Star at the time had very few updates and articles on the Diaz situation, but it was mostly because they had their 360 degree football helmet on.  However the articles in the LJS didn’t have the same quotes that were published by the Omaha World Herald.  Couldn’t all of these public quotes about a recruit not yet enrolled in school potentially be a recruiting violation?

The status on Diaz—still an oral commit and might be able to enroll at Nebraska in December.  However, Kentucky, Arkansas and other schools are knocking on his door.  

This is the latest fiasco in Nebraska basketball recruiting, but let’s look at the rest of the situations that have occurred just in this year’s recruiting:

• Roburt Sallie—Roburt was originally recruited in 2006, but could not academically qualify to play for Nebraska, so instead went to juco and this year was re-recruited and committed to Nebraska.  However, little did anyone know that in 2006, Roburt enrolled at Nebraska and was in class for a week.  Unfortunately, Big 12 rule 6.2, which says that any student-athlete who enrolls at a conference institution, part or full time, must meet initial NCAA eligibility requirements. Sallie had not met those requirements when he was enrolled as a part-time student in August 2006.  Whoops.  Looks like someone dropped the ball there and Roburt was deemed ineligible to play for the Huskers.  Roburt is now with Memphis.  What a reward for John Calipari.  He seems to get all the luck
• Christopher Niemann–Niemann, a 6-11 center and the other original from the 2-man recruiting class with Roburt Sallie is scheduled to arrive from Germany. He has been declared ineligible by the NCAA for his freshman season but can participate in practices. He’ll have three years of eligibility remaining beginning in 2009-10.  Christopher participated on a German club team that had some professionals on its roster, even though he accepted no pay. The same thing happened last season to players from Iowa State and Washington State who were former teammates of Niemann.  Slingblade for some reason thought he was going to get to play right away this season, but the history of Niemann’s teammates from last year should have said something. 
• Teeng Akol—Teeng was supposed to make a visit to Nebraska and said, “I think I can help them.  I’m not familiar with everything, but I know they’re in the Big 12.”  He originally signed with South Florida over West Virginia, Oklahoma, Xavier, Southern Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky.  Akol signed scholarship papers in June with South Florida. However, USF officials suddenly asked Akol to leave the school because of academic reasons, despite the fact he’d already been admitted and was taking summer classes.  So it sounded like the Huskers were going to get a steal.  However, Teeng visited Oklahoma State first and  never looked back.  He didn’t even make his visit to Nebraska.
• Eshaunte Jones—Eshaunte actually did get signed and sealed by Doc Sadler for this season.  However he comes with baggage as well.  He originally committed to Indiana in the fall of 2006. He instead went to Hargrave Military Academy in Virginia, where he played last season. He then signed with Oregon State but was released from his letter of intent when the school changed coaches.  Boy the paperwork that must have been done on that one.
• Brandon Ubel—Brandon, from Overland Park, KS seems like the only normal one in the bunch accepting a scholarship offer for 2009-10, but of course it is still an oral commitment until later this fall when early signing occurs.   

The loser in this whole situation—Paul Velander.  The walk-on that has played significant minutes for Nebraska the past two seasons was originally slated to get the scholarship vacated when Roburt Sallie found out he couldn’t come to Nebraska, but even as the Diaz fiasco continues, poor Paul still doesn’t get a scholarship. 

Ok, we’ll be the first to recognize that the administration at Indiana University has had an apocryphal six months with its basketball program.  There’s no need to rehash all that’s happened (see here, here and here for some of our previous posts), but much like a regular dude on the prowl after a particularly crazyeyed Stephanie Ragusa girlfriend experience, the administration may have gotten a little peepee in the pants over its next flavor of love – Tom Crean – he who represents a seemingly austere return to normalcy.

Harding’s Presidency Didn’t Go So Well Either

Hey, we like Coach Crean.  Seems like a nice fella who can coach a little basketball.  Had a superb March run at an urban Catholic school a few years ago with a wiry guard named Dwyane Wade, as we recall.  Of course that run in 2003 was followed by only one NCAA win in the next five years, which was subsequently followed by Crean taking the Indiana job and watching as pretty much everyone who could play basketball in Bloomington exited stage left (regards to Kyle Taber, we’re sure he’s quite talented – after all he does shoot 78% from the floor). 

In full panic mode, the IU brass today approved a 10-year, $24 million contract for Tom Crean to coach their beloved Hoosiers.  This comes on the heels of national championship coach Bill Self recently signing a 10-year, $30 million deal with Kansas.  Now we know that over ten years, a $6 million dollar difference is a lot of money, but we still have trouble seeing Tom Crean anywhere near the same coaching stratosphere as Bill Self (see comparison table below).  This appears to have every mark of an administration that is desperately seeking stability (which they’ll probably get) without any clue as to how good (and how fast) Crean can will make Indiana. 

But hey, they’ll have peace of mind about the recruiting violations, right? 

More:  Crean’s contract, for your reading pleasure. 

Not a full week after John Pelphrey signed a nice one-year extension and received a ‘we have full confidence in you’ raise, he was hit with news that his talented but confounding PG Patrick Beverley has effectively been dismissed from the program.  Privacy concerns limit what school and team officials would say on the record, but Friday was the last day of summer classes at Arkansas and it doesn’t seem a major reach to think that Beverley’s dismissal involved academic problems. 

The Hawgs Have Some Rebuilding Ahead of Them

Arkansas was already facing a rebuilding year next season, having lost four starters from an NCAA second-round casualty squad.  Beverley stood to be the leading returning scorer (12 ppg) and rebounder (7 rpg) and overall team leader despite his diminutive size (6’1).  As Hawg blog Razorback Expats put it, this kinda sucks:

John Pelphrey’s incoming recruiting class is highly regarded, but you can’t like the fact that the player who is now the Hogs’ leading returning scorer – that would be junior guard Stefan Welsh – averaged a whopping 5.3 points per game last year. Only a few days before Beverley was ruled ineligible, Pelphrey told the media that “our basketball team is only going to be as good as our three juniors.” Oops.

Looks like Alabama’s (the presumptive 2009 SEC West champion) seventeen basketball fans are collectively rejoicing right now.

We were trolling through some of the Indiana blogs yesterday to see how things were going in red-state flyover land the heartland, and although there was some palpable anger still directed at Kelvin Sampson for the shenanigans he pulled in Bloomington during his tenure, it seemed as if most of their fans were ready to move on with the new Tom Crean regime and their headline (only?) returning player,  sophomore guard Jordan Crawford (9/3 last year).  Funny, plans.  On May 28, The Hoosier Scoop wrote about Crawford (paraphrasing Crean):

Crean said that there is no change in Jordan Crawford’s status. Crawford, who will be the only returning player who came to IU on scholarship, is back in Detroit right now and will not attend summer school. “He doesn’t need to, and I think it’s good for him to get home,” Crean said. “It’s important to remember that those guys have been through a whole lot.”

Crawford Didn’t Want to Carry the IU Torch (photo credit:  Bloomington Herald-Times)

Apparently Crawford liked home a little better than Bloomington.  Today he became the sixth Indiana player to leave the program in the wake of the Kelvin Sanctions fiasco – joining Eric Gordon (NBA), Armon Bassett, DeAndre Thomas, Jamarcus Ellis, AJ Ratliff and Eli Holman as players going elsewhere next year.  As far as we can tell, this leaves only little-used (11 mpg) senior forward Kyle Taber as the only scholarship player returning next season. 

Witness the pain emanating from the most excellent IU blog, Inside the Hall:

Now, please excuse me. I’m going to go ignore the fact that any of this ever happened. If you close your eyes so hard you see stars, breathe deeply, and hit yourself in the head with a ball peen hammer forty or fifty times, it’s like our team is still really good. And there are pretty colors everywhere! I highly recommend it.

Ouch.  This complete demolition of a program with the status of Indiana represents a nearly unprecedented situation in college basketball history.  Sure, Tulane and Baylor blew up their programs based on scandals (point-shaving, and well, murder), but the closest thing we can remember that compares to what Tom Crean will face next year is Rick Pitino’s first year (1989-90) at Kentucky in the wake of several major recruiting violations.  Pitino had several scholarship players returning including two all-SEC honorees, however, and four of the younger players ended up with their names in the rafters.  Still, it took five years for the Wildcats to get back to the F4.  We have trouble seeing Kyle Taber leading any sort of renaissance at IU – it could take many more than five years before this sinking ship at Indiana is righted again.

Now that the gumshoes (an overly generous term if ever there was one) over at the WWL have pretty much made the case for the NCAA that OJ Mayo was taking improper benefits both before and during his short stint at USC, TrojanLand is doing all it can to respond in the most American of ways – by covering their ass.

Look Who’s Coming, Trojans!  (photo credit: AP)

Anticpating an imminent NCAA investigation – after all, Myles Brand ain’t nobody’s chump – USC is battoning down the hatches and getting its story together.  According to the LA Daily News:

USC intends to tell the NCAA it knew of no wrongdoing involving O.J. Mayo and banned his mentor, Rodney Guillory, from receiving tickets as an illustration of its attempt to prevent the basketball star from receiving any improper benefits, according to sources.  That will be the outline of the university’s defense, according to officials familiar with the situation.  “Right now, we’re just trying to weather the storm,” said a USC official, who asked not to be identified.

Sounds reasonable enough.  Guillory, the man who gold-foil giftwrapped Mayo for USC, wasn’t allowed to receive tickets to games.  We’re not sure exactly what that proves, as we suppose he could have simply bought tickets off of Craigslist like everyone else.  But what about this little piece of prejudicial information?

But there remain some questions to this defense. Guillory was frequently seen in the basketball offices and also around the locker room, and regularly attended pickup games at the Galen Center when Mayo played last summer. 

So USC’s defense is that they didn’t provide game tickets to Guillory, where unless he was literally sitting in the huddle he wouldn’t have been able to communicate with Mayo anyway; BUT, Guillory was allowed to loiter around the locker room, the basketball offices and the pickup games (where he could ostensibly run into Mayo at any moment).  We’s no lawyerin type, but that sounds like troubles in Troy. 

Of course, it IS the typically-befuddled NCAA we’re talking about.  They might start investigating USC and end up putting UCLA on probation.