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| Highly touted recruit Lache Seastrunk |
No matter how crappy of a week you may have had, the Oregon Ducks football team had a crappier week than you. Yesterday, Charles Robinson of Yahoo! Sports posted a story claiming that, according to public records, the University of Oregon made payments of almost $30,000 dollars to two guys with have known ties to multiple Oregon Duck recruits.
By all accounts, this news seems to be the "major program" getting busted for "major recruiting violations" that Colin Cowherd was referring to on his radio show earlier this week.
By now, there have been hundreds of articles and columns written about this story. I've only had a chance to read through about 8 or so of them. The basics facts are this: Oregon paid $25,000 to a guy named Will Lyles and $3,745 to a guy named Baron Flenory. These two men operate recruiting services and have relationships with Oregon recruits DeAnthony Thomas, Lache Seastrunk, Cliff Harris, Dior Mathis, and Tacoi Sumler. Both Flenory and Lyles are rumored to be "street agents", by the way. But having relationships with recruits, at first glance, isn't against the rules.
With the NCAA reportedly only beginning their investigation into this matter, this issue probably isn't going away anytime soon. And there will probably be even more facts that come out over time. So I'm not saying just because this story has come out, that Oregon is automatically guilty as charged. They may very well be found to have done nothing wrong and everything within the rules.
But either way this thing goes, this really doesn't look good at all for the football program.
Now every single Oregon fan today on Twitter or on the internet is all pissed, right? Everyone is defensive and calling BS on this story. Some are even just chalking it up as "no big deal." And they may be right. The NCAA investigators may find nothing and Oregon will never be found guilty of any wrong doing. But let's not be naive here, people. Let's not pretend that this goes on at every major successful college football program in the country. It was just Oregon's turn to get caught.
Eugene Register-Guard columnist George Schroeder once met Will Lyles. When Schroeder asked what affiliation Lyles had with the Ducks, Lyles said “I help the Oregon coaches out sometimes.” Allllllrighty then. That doesn't sound shady in the least. Not at all.
Regarding these so-called "recruiting services", Schroeder writes:
"Some are run by shady guys, some aren’t. But they cover an area, and coaches deal with them. It’s part of the business model of college football, and the amounts paid — $8,000 here, $5,000 there, and so on, are explainable.
Dick Lascola, whose company Scouting Evaluation Association was paid $2,600 by Oregon in 2010, told SI.com: “For $25,000, it better provide a hell of a lot. That’s an exorbitant amount of money to pay for something.”
At this point, it doesn’t matter if Oregon is clean and stupid or dirty and stupid. Sorry, but there’s no way to justify this."
And John Canzano makes a great point, saying: "This stuff never stays below level. It rises up. It stinks up everything. Yes, even if the Ducks technically broke no NCAA rules, they've now lowered themselves and become one of "those" programs. It looks desperate."
I think we can all agree that this doesn't look very good for Oregon. At this time, I want to urge all Oregon Duck fans out there to please be reasonable. I beg of you. Don't be "Auburn fan", okay? You're better than that. No doubt you were giving them a bunch of crap about two months ago for the whole Cam Newton mess. Now that Oregon's on the hot seat, don't be "that guy" about it, ok?
[ George Schroeder, John Canzano, Charles Robinson ]
