(04-10-2014 11:25 AM)CommuterBob Wrote: I'll post more later. This is a fun read so far.
Quote:The most common non-cash gifts to recruits are cars. In every major city inside the Southeastern Conference's footprint is a tangle of auto dealerships with varying ties to particular schools.
"There are jokes about kids getting cars, but that's actually pretty easy. We all have dealerships all over. You practically have to nowadays, anyway, just for the coaches. Think about it. Most schools, all the football, basketball, and baseball coaches and their wives are getting some kind of vehicle for free as part of their contract. Then they're turning them in every three years or so. That's a fleet right there. You need a lot of guys with dealerships, and you need them in different towns. Then getting a clean title on a member of the family is pretty easy."
Whatever the minimum of necessary paperwork to absolve a player of improper benefits received is, it's not a problem. A title for a moderately priced SUV can be created in a relative's name, as can a receipt of sale for a reasonable price.
"Hey, how'd he get that ride? His uncle bought it. How did his uncle buy it? Paid cash. Paid cash, how'd he do that? ****, we don't know, but here's the receipt where he paid cash, and now y'all ain't got ****. Go tell the NCAA you think we're cheating because this kid's uncle bought him a used Tahoe in cash, you racist."
So tell me something I haven't known for 40 plus years. I'd say the article is accurate except for a few important details. I've lived all over the country and I know outright that it goes on around campuses of the Big 10, ACC, and the old SWC and now in the Big 12. All I can say is that I recognized some of the situations described but a few details were left out and one point made was sensationalized and misrepresented. The bit describing the recruit on the phone seeking $70,000 where the bag man responded "We don't do that." and hung up is not how the game is played.
If a coach, or bag man, down here gets the goods on someone else what the recruiting world sees is a flip. The school that gets caught simply backs off and the one that caught them gets the kid. If a coach or booster tries to entrap another school down here, and costs them bowl eligibility, that comes out of everyone's pocket because all bowl proceeds are shared and a school on probation isn't making everyone in the conference more money. That's putting ego before business and the one who would do that is going to suffer isolation and get nailed the first time they slip up.
The second problem I see with the article is it didn't go past what has been known for decades. So it may be new news to the average reader, but it is old hat, outdated, and although still used it has been bypassed in bigger cases by more sophisticated approaches now in use. With some states the recruiting perks could even be coming from within the state government depending upon where representatives went to law school and in states where 1 university provides the bulk of the lawyers you can rest assured that the State House and Senate are filled with a preponderance of their alumni. You won't find anyone hankering to subpoena one of them.
The third problem here is that the article is sanitized in that it doesn't report other sleaze that has infiltrated the process, like some (far from all) schools that provide women to recruits, or like in the Sunshine state, and in a few others I know, where local law enforcement runs shotgun over problem kids, and due process is subverted with the late night call to certain coaches who step in to handle the problem in private, or as with the abandoning of the easy courses for no courses at all which has cropped up publicly with one prominent ACC school.
What the article described well was the ties to local coaches and how they are initially made and how fundamentally important they are, and how they are sustained over a long duration. If you are looking for the non college campus "Bag Man" you need look no farther than your local touchdown club for the prominent high schools in your county or town, or city.
I have never been involved in illegal recruiting, but I did report it for a couple of decades, but always to the school president so that it could be handled internally (all but two gave up on the prospects). If they refused (as they did twice) to deal with it then it was passed along to those who would start enforcement proceedings.
I would love to see it cleaned up and I hope that full cost of tuition scholarships and a living stipend will help. But as long as mom lives in poverty or the kids want bling I have a hunch the problem will remain.
Face it guys U.S.C. was giving away cars and condos. Ohio State basically copped a plea under Tressel to avoid some real gory details, or did you really think it was about selling jerseys and free tattoos?
This article is a drama set in the South where the culture and story is more readily believable in part due to the recent success of the SEC. But, whether you want to believe it or not it is happening at a school near you.
But look on the bright side, it is still nowhere near as sleazy as those guys and gals you vote for every four years and I don't care which party they represent. Compared to State and National politics football recruiting is a cheap bribe, uh excuse me, a cheap lobbying effort.
P.S. And one other erroneous aspect to this story is this, Bag Men love to brag. They are just careful about to whom they brag. The reason they don't get caught is because of the lack of evidence, the plausible deniability, and the shunning that would occur, and more importantly the culture I described where schools don't rat each other out because of the bottom line, and because a coach who does gig another program isn't going to be part of the coaching fraternity for very long. The way this guy writes you would think these guys were the profile of personality that the NSA or CIA would be looking for and that simply isn't so in the majority of cases.
That alone is why it will be interesting to see what happens at Alabama now that Kiffin is on board. I can't think of anyone who offended the coaching fraternity of the South more than Kiffin did in a couple of years time. Another red flag that should be noted are the number of former coaches who were too old to place elsewhere who were kept on payroll after retirements, firings, and etc., by their former schools. They are kept on the payroll to keep their mouths shut.
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Meet the Bag Man - how SEC programs cheat like hell and get away with it
