W********s
发帖数: 2256 | 1 If you're an Oregon fan, you should be very nervous. And if you're a fan of
a lot of big programs, you probably shouldn't be too giddy about the Ducks'
predicament, as I'll explain in a moment.
On Thursday night, ESPN reported that the NCAA is examining whether a Texas
man helped steer recruits to Oregon. Ducks officials admitted in a statement
that they had paid the man $25,000 in the spring of 2010 for recruiting
services. The man is a former Texas-based trainer named Willie Lyles, and
the recruit in question was former blue-chip prospect Lache Seastrunk, a
redshirt freshman running back from Temple, Texas.
Keep in mind that the NCAA has been determined to slow down or stop the the
AAU-ization of college football via street agents, runners and dubious
middle men that have popped up at a staggering rate in the past few years
through the proliferation of the offseason recruiting business and 7-on-7
world.
Coach Chip Kelly and Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens said they are
confident that Oregon's actions are nothing that should seem out of order. "
Our compliance office signed off on it," Mullens told the Oregonian.
The NCAA is going to have some more questions about this, starting with an
examination of Lyles' business. How many other schools were buying his
service? What information -- recruiting film databases and recruiting
updates -- was he providing for that really high fee?
Almost all FBS programs pay a variety of recruiting services each year. Most
of these services charge under $15,000 and provide tons of high school game
film and can offer contact information for hundreds of prospects. The most
expensive service out there, based on what I was told Thursday night after
checking with a bunch of college recruiting staffers, is XOS national
package, which runs $40,000 but provides film for prospects throughout the
entire country and has been put together by a conglomerate of smaller
recruiting services.
Most of those film services, like Dick Lascola's, Gary Howard's (one that
Oregon subscribes to) and Dwight Smith's (Emmitt Smith's old high school
coach), are legit. However, there now are a bunch of recruiting services
that operate in a gray area. They are relationship-based and run by people
who are much closer to several of the top recruits. Their sales pitches to
the programs include saying they can ensure a kid will call them back
throughout the process so that those pivotal coach-recruit relationships can
be built. Several of them operate as "shuttle services" more than anything,
meaning that if a school buys their service for $5,000 or $10,000, the
service will do whatever it can to make sure that a group of the most
coveted prospects in their area will get to campus for summer camp or
unofficial visits. And yes, it's something that the NCAA has been looking
into, and this is why Oregon isn't the only program that should be holding
its breath right now.
The NCAA is going to want to know whether Seastrunk, who comes from a modest
background, took any unofficial visits to Oregon and if Lyles accompanied
him on them. It will also want to know where else Seastrunk took unofficial
visits and if Lyles joined him on those.
From a big picture view, this stuff is really shady. I spoke to one college
assistant who told me of a recruiting service one of his assistants
convinced him to buy because the coach told him the guy who ran it "knows
all of the high school coaches in the state, and if you don't buy his
service, he'll talk bad about about you to every coach there." The coaching
staff got the service, despite that it overlapped with more established
recruiting services the staff already subscribed to.
Many schools don't have to run it through compliance when they buy a
recruiting service, but that has been changing in the past year or two, I'm
told. What will be key with this probe at Oregon will be how thorough the
Ducks compliance staff was in vetting Lyles' service. Seastrunk's mom raised
a few questions for ESPN last night and they are some of the ones that the
NCAA is going to be looking to answer.
"Willie said he was a trainer," Evelyn Seastrunk told ESPN. "Now Oregon says
he's a scout. Is he on Oregon's payroll? If Willie Lyles collected $25,000
off my son, he needs to be held accountable. The NCAA must find out for me."
Again, $25,000 is a ridiculously high amount, especially if the service isn'
t really comprehensive in terms of the volume of game film and reach it has. |
|
