Morning Five: 11.20.09 Edition

Posted by rtmsf on November 20th, 2009

morning5

  1. AOL Fanhouse reported yesterday that there is an ongoing pattern of NCAA rules violations at South Florida, according to various former assistant coaches and players of the program under Stan Heath.  Many of the alleged violations involve strength and conditioning assistant Terrelle Woody, who was hired in part to ensure the recruitment of Gus Gilchrist to the program in 2008.  The allegations include unauthorized “open gyms” during dead periods, a cover-up of a burglary involving current players, and the providing of excessive free transportation for Gus Gilchrist by Woody.  The details are very specific, and we’d bet that there’s something behind all of this.
  2. Of all the things to lose your job over…  San Diego State athletic director Jeff Schemmel resigned his position yesterday in light of allegations that he used the school credit card to rent a car and pay for gas to meet his mistress in Alabama.  Schemmel made over $250k per year, but we guess having a mistress 2500 miles away taxes your financial picture more than we think.
  3. Villanova big man Mouphtaou Yarou had to fly home from the Puerto Rico Tipoff yesterday prior to his team’s game against George Mason due to a viral infection.  Without Yarou or Reggie Redding (suspension) in the lineup for the Wildcats, Villanova came from behind in gritty fashion to win the game on a late three by Isaiah Armwood.
  4. Yesterday the SI guys gave us their NPOY candidates, etc.; today they draft their collegiate dream teams and banter back and forth about it.  Armstrong’s team has the most NBA level talent, so we’re going with that one as the top choice.
  5. The NCAA defended Memphis’ decision to not release the content of its response to the Memphis rebuttal in the Derrick Rose SAT scandal that we wrote about yesterday.  “In order to… maintain the integrity of the enforcement process, there is no ability for a member school to print, save or download the information contained on the secure web site,” said an NCAA spokesperson yesterday.  Which doesn’t really answer the question in our view.  This NCAA response speaks to the physical limitations of the information, but it doesn’t speak to the paraphrasing and re-telling of it in any way, which Memphis could easily do if they merely said “the NCAA agreed/disagreed with our assessment on strict liability.”  Again, we think that Memphis is handling this the right way, though, because it makes the NCAA look bad, and when Memphis if ultimately punished for this, the Tigers will have won the PR battle over this charade already.
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