Hard out here for a pimp
It's a couple days old now but worth revisiting. ESPN's Dana O'Neil surveyed 20 unnamed college basketball coaches (wild guess: John Calipari wasn't one of them), who gave their thoughts on recruiting, cheating and their ever-growing relationship with each other.
Segment of interest:
Which league is the cleanest? The dirtiest?
Congratulations, Jim Delany. Your league wins in a landslide. Of the 20 coaches surveyed, 11 said the Big Ten was the cleanest in the country. Three others cited the land where time stood still, also known as the scholarship-less Ivy League. (Although even the Ancient Eight earned one disparaging nod: "The Ivy League,'' one coach said before pausing to add, "I mean the Ivy League a couple of years ago, before all of that stuff at Harvard.")
But coaches cited the Big Ten's perceived willingness to police itself and rosters that "made sense," in which players traditionally come from the footprint of the schools they choose to attend.
"Look at Michigan State,'' one coach said. "They're there every year. When you see the dips, then you wonder. What happened? What didn't happen? But a guy like Tom Izzo, he's there every year because you know what his program is about and so do his players. There's a consistency and an integrity.''
As for the dirtiest, despite Mike Slive's best efforts to clean up the image, the Southeastern Conference was perceived as the worst, with three coaches partnering the SEC with the Big East and another tossing in the Big 12 (one coach went league-by-league, counting up schools). All in all, the SEC was named by 14 of the coaches.
"Oh no, it's not just a myth,'' one coach said about the SEC. "It's the truth."
Shocking, just shocking.
A couple more worth reading today. By now you should be well aware of Nick Saban's comments this week comparing agents with pimps, in light of related investigations involving Alabama, Florida and apparently the rest of the SEC by mid-August.
Although Saban is well-pointed in going after agents who cross the lines, the hypocrisy of statements like that from a guy in his position is just too easy to point out. Mark Kriegel does it best in this column. It isn't fair to broad-brush all major college coaches as exploiters of these athletes. At the very least, that's a bit strong for many of them. It works for some, though, doesn't it?
And finally, Jason Whitlock has had a busy and acerbic week. His latest blast calls out the journalists who go after cheaters rather than the organization that creates the marketplace for cheating with its own outdated policies.
Interesting thoughts, strong words, but I have to disagree on a couple things. First of all, let's not let Reggie Bush and other athletes who willingly cheat off the hook just because the NCAA has issues. They should be held accountable as well.
Secondly, if it weren't for journalists pursuing and breaking open stories like these, we wouldn't be having the discussion about the NCAA and the way things need to be reformed from the top down. Do you think attempts to link all of this to Pete Carroll and the USC administration weren't made? Do you think they really had no idea? What's able to be written is often a fraction of what's known. And with that, I'll stop writing.
