Rectum? Damn near killed him!
Sweet Jesus….anyone still wondering what was taking the NCAA so long to release its investigative findings and announce U.S.C.’s penance? Here’s 67 pages that may explain what made the process so tedious..it’s actually a wonder how it didn’t take an additional two weeks just to run spell-check on this Homeric gavel.
I’ll confess: I’ve had one of those Cialis-level week-long erections since the NCAA Committee released its knockdown, skewering, motherfucker of an Infractions Report on the Trojans last week, which essentially did everything but douse Mike Garrett with kerosene and set him on fire. I know, I know..the traditionalists still want us to be mad that we only got to Pete Carroll once, and were otherwise throttled by his semi-pro team for the better part of a decade. And they want to remind us that these penalties actually don’t help the Irish in the short-term, as U.S.C. has always been the biggest boost to our Strength of Schedule factor in the B.C.S. rankings, making anything that hurts their ability to be a solid program a net negative for us.
And to quote Jon Moxon, “I say fuuuuuuuck that…”
Have you actually read this thing? I mean literally sat down and gone through every scorching page of the report? It paints a truly awesome picture of a sleazy, no-rules outfit that not only violated every regulation imaginable, but further didn’t even deem it necessary to bother hiding it..I honestly half-expected to see the names “Craig James” or “Eric Dickerson” pop up in there. It’s long, but absolutely worth the perusal..we’re talking ice-cold-beer good; snorting-coke-off-a-stripper’s-tits good.
Anyone confused by the “harshness” of the penalties imposed on the football program was probably led astray by South Compton’s P.R. Spin over the last few days, thinking that all we’re dealing with here is a couple of mercenaries student-athletes who got a few benefits on the side..you know, O.J. Mayo getting a little cash and Reggie Bush’s parents getting free rent.
Nuh-uh. There’s a little more to it than that..in reading the report, you find that:
Bush and his family agreed to form a “sports agency” with Lloyd Lake and Michael Michaels, whereby the two would “sponsor” him up front in exchange for the right to represent Bush as an agency once he became a professional.
The benefits given to Bush and his family over that stretched totaled over $290,000. They included the following:
- A purchased vehicle, as Bush was apparently “embarrassed” by his previous truck, as well as cash for new rims and an audio system.
- Plane tickets for the Bush family to fly from San Diego to Miami for the Orange Bowl.
- A weekend stay at the Manchester Hyatt in San Diego to attend Marshall Faulk’s birthday party (and limo service between the hotel and party).
- A weekend stay at the Venetian in Vegas.
- Rent-free living for his parents in a $750K home (and over $10K for furniture and appliances for the home).
- $28,000 to Bush’s family to help settle pre-existing debts.
- $7,500 for the family to travel to Hawaii.
- And thousands and thousands of dollars in spending cash for Bush and his family.
While all of these goodies by themselves rendered Bush an ineligible amateur, the technicality that U.S.C. attempted to weasel themselves out of it with was that they “didn’t know.” The Poodle himself even got into the act after the punishment was handed down, stating that he “couldn’t do anything about it” due to his chronic unawareness.
Yeah, Pete. You had no clue. You had no reason to wonder how Reggie upgraded to a fully customized car from a pick-up truck. You had no reason to ponder the nature of the two agents – er, friends – that Bush was now bringing into the locker room.
And his finest defense to not bothering to monitor and maybe ask questions? That Reggie Bush somehow wasn’t a superstar yet to a degree that would’ve indicated he needed to be watched. “Reggie Bush wasn’t Reggie Bush” yet, according to Petey.
Yeah, Pete…he was only a Top-5 Heisman finalist who had just led the conference in all-purpose yards for the season. No reason to bother checking up on a guy like that while he’s got a new car, cash for trips to Vegas, and parents suddenly living around the corner in a new house they couldn’t have afforded if they lived to be a thousand.
It’s already at full-blown Lack of Institutional Control-level at this point. Ignorance doesn’t fly when it comes to your star players and monitoring. But what got U.S.C. bent over and rear-ended by the committee is the fact that there was absolutely no way they couldn’t have known. Bush registered the new car with the school’s auto information, as per school policy with students. No one in Compliance ever asked or checked…not even when Bush left the license plate line and the where-purchase line blank on the registration form.
And of course, Running Backs coach Todd McNair had direct knowledge of the situation when Lake – after being spurned by Bush in favor of marketing agent Mike Ornstein before the NFL Draft – called McNair’s office and told him of the situation, hoping that McNair would “persuade” Bush to either keep his end of the original agreement, or reimburse him for the funding he’d provided to that point (the clear threat being that Lake would be suing Bush otherwise, bringing to light the relationship and doing a Derek Vineyard job on the face of the school’s football program). Naturally, McNair never reported the conversation to the school’s Compliance Office, and also lied about the phone call’s existence or even knowing who Lloyd Lake was (though phone records, testimony, and even photographs demonstrate otherwise).
It’s all so juicy and delish, and that doesn’t even cover the section of the report about O.J. Mayo and his entourage being fully funded by agents, nor the section about U.S.C.’s recruiting violations.
Mind you, the university’s been handling the whole situation with the appropriate amount of remorse and class, claiming that their superiority is why the world’s out to get them and telling everyone who will listen that they plan to appeal the unjust sanctions. Instead, they ought to be grateful they weren’t given the full Death Penalty-esque Television Ban, an assessment the Committee stated to have strongly considered in light of the violations committed.
What I can’t believe no one is discussing is the degree of scumbags that Reggie Bush and his self-entitled parents are. It’s amazing. The guy blatantly and unabashedly accepts hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal benefits under an equally illegal agreement to be represented in the future by two agents, then signs with a different agent prior to the draft, then refuses to re-pay any of the money given to him and his family until he was sued and the situation became public. And of course, he completely refused to cooperate with the NCAA’s request(s) for information or provide any exonerating information to corroborate his self-proclaimed “innocence.”
You were wrong if you always felt Bush was just a cocky, smug prick. He’s a self-entitled, self-absorbed, back-stabbing pile of shit in Adidas who hung his school, his ex-teammates, and ex-“business partners” out to dry.
Maybe schadenfreude is the wrong emotion on this one, but I just can’t help myself. They’ve been skirting the rules for years, merely getting caught with evidence on these situations. They allowed program access to rappers, thugs, murderers and agents in the name of upping the glam factor of the team, rather than protecting themselves from their seedy influence. And as a final “I-don’t-give-a-fuck” gesture to the NCAA and their ongoing investigation, they went and hired the greasiest, best-known rule-violator on the market to replace Carroll (who naturally claims he didn’t leave town because he knew the house was coming down, but rather because coaching the Seattle Seahawks is everyone’s dream opportunity).
In short, they didn’t pay attention to the lesson of Miami in the 90’s. So let yourself enjoy it. They earned it.