Ain't No Party Like An SEC Party

I’m living in Northwest Florida right now, and when the story about USC broke all the SEC fans were up in arms, yelling that they should have more sanctions. The second Florida was mentioned, all the fans here were saying, “It’s no big deal. He was leaving the school anyway. Why should the school get punished?” Now, it looks like the whole SEC is about to get a beat-down from the NCAA, and I can’t wait. The players that are involved should all lose their eligibility.

Not to say I’m not enjoying this immensely, but if the problem with agents and runners is really as rampant as the SEC coaches are saying, the B10 might not be immune to all of this.

Then again, this could just be the SEC coaches trying rationalize what is happening. If it’s happening to all of us, then that makes us less scummy individually, right?!

…assuming of course that they fully cooperate with NCAA investigations. But a fair number of good players will be losing at least a couple of games at the start of the season.

If your a Penn State fan, you want the investigation to drag as long as possible, because any games you play with a guy who’s ineligible would be forefiets, as such, if a player has questionable eligibility, he pretty much has to sit.

I can hear their telecasts now, such and such would be soooo much better this year but they are missing a couple key players. Anyone sure this agent that held the party wasn’t hired by USC to try and stick it to the SEC?

This is very reminiscent of that party at Conseco’s house in Florida when every MLB star of the modern era was apparently there shooting steroids.

when it seems abundantly clear it’s the agents to blame in this case. and, just for the record, there’s nothing in any of these incidents to suggest the institutions themselves will face any sanctions. so much for wishful thinking.

as for the friend of the friend sec fan… we’re not sure what the hell he was talking about. nobody on roll bama roll thinks “were so screwed” over all this. right now the harshest possibility we are looking at is losing marcel darius for a month and that’s looking less likely by the day. (which is good news for penn state, i guess)

If agents and scouts have easy access to players this is going to happen. Every school has the ability to make situations like this harder to occur. People complain that Joe doesn’t give access to scouts and agents at PSU and this hurts their draft stock but what he is doing is doing his best in monitoring his student athletes. I have no sympathy for a school that makes the locker room and practice open season for the scummy agents because along with the good agents you will get the corrupt ones. Any school or fan base that bitches about agents having access need only look at the policies that their coaches have pertaining to player/agent access.

Ain’t no party like a Scranton Party, ‘cause a Scranton party don’t stop! Huh huh huh!

This has been the summer of sports news in general. It is so crazy that things like Christoph Lemaitre running a 9.98 100m two weeks ago – the first time a caucasian man has ever done this, after a century’s worth of sprinters – doesn’t become an ESPN headline and barely gets a blurb on Deadspin. We’re buried in news.

What in the hell is TMZ doing covering college sports?

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gameon/post/2010/07/nick-saban-alabama-agents/1

Nick Saban’s comparison of agents to pimps has drawn return fire from Ralph Cindrich, a respected agent for NFL players. And Cindrich says that if Alabama’s coach wants to go toe-to-toe he can make some accusations of his own.

“I don’t know that I would disagree with him about some agents as pimps, but all I know is there are coaches who would also fall in that category,” Cindrich tells the New York Times. “I would never tolerate nor permit Saban or any other coach to lump me in that category.”

And here comes the challenge:

“In terms of him throwing that out there, most agents know what goes on in college programs and what programs are clean or not. You want to find out who has the dirty programs, give immunity and go off the record with agents, and it would be like a cockfight, the last one standing wins. There are ways to determine the truth of allegations out there.”

water the whole game down and start up their own farm system – openly compete with the NCAA schools for recruits out of high school?

Have we talked about this yet?

We’re supposed to believe that Dareus flew all the way to Miami to see his good buddy Austin not knowing where he got the money to pay for the plane ticket…If he had the money to pay Austin for the plane ticket, why didn’t he just buy a plane ticket?
-BSD

Okay, first off if Dareus was planing on paying him back (which he supposedly did) then why would he worry about where Austin got the money from? A plane ticket isn’t a beer, but it isn’t a car either. It’s fairly easy to put it on a credit card. Your hindsight is making you overly skeptical IMO. It’s easier to say he should have known if you already know.

As for why he had Austin get the ticket in the first place, there are a number of explanations. Maybe Dareus didn’t have access to a computer with internet while he was at home with his sick mother. Maybe he wasn’t very familiar with the process of buying a plane ticket. It can be intimidating if you’ve never done it before and have no idea what you’re doing. Maybe the airline didn’t accept American Express. Maybe Austin just offered to do it, and Dareus agreed because he was already overwhelmed and exhausted from having to deal with his mom dying. My mom died of breast cancer earlier that same month, and I can tell you that I wasn’t necessarily energetic or functioning at 100% mentally during that ordeal.

And we’re supposed to believe that once he got to this party with his buddy Austin he reimbursed him for the air fare, asked for a receipt, and flew home?

He flew home when he found out his mother had died. He supposedly left the party when he found out there were agents there. The players are taught to get receipts. Whether that was the plan all along, or Dareus decided he needed to do it after he realized that there might be some trouble, I can’t say for sure.

We’re supposed to believe that Dareus flew all the way to Miami not knowing who was going to be at the party?

How would he know unless Austin told him exactly what was going on? There’s a lot to do at the beach. We don’t even know if Austin told Dareus about any parties that he was planning on going to, much less the identity of everyone who would be at said party. I highly doubt Austin said, “hey, come down to miami my agent’s throwing a big bash”. Well, you may think that. Going to a party is not a violation, you just can’t accept benefits.

You guys should man up and say if this stuff is happening in or around your program, you want the players who take part in it gone. Don’t blame the agents. The kids have to make the decision to ultimately take the money. So far all I see from Alabama fans is excuses.

FYI, that was the response of many, myself included. You can go back and look at RBR and you’ll see that it’s true. But that’s IF he’s guilty, and I’m starting to think that is not the case. We aren’t going to throw innocent players under the bus. Kids who take money are responsible for their actions, but the details of this incident seem to indicate a case of entrapment. It seems that you have a player or two at UNC that sold out to an agent, and the agent put him up in South Beach to lure in other players.

Its odd what Saban is threatening. If agents and scouts have easy access to players this is going to happen. Every school has the ability to make situations like this harder to occur. People complain that Joe doesn’t give access to scouts and agents at PSU and this hurts their draft stock but what he is doing is doing his best in monitoring his student athletes. I have no sympathy for a school that makes the locker room and practice open season for the scummy agents because along with the good agents you will get the corrupt ones. Any school or fan base that bitches about agents having access need only look at the policies that their coaches have pertaining to player/agent access.

From what I’ve heard Alabama doesn’t open up the locker room to “scummy agents”. It’s not a free for all like what you might have heard about USC. What Alabama does is bring in legit agents so that they can have meetings with players in a professional manner. They do this so that the players hopefully take a righteous path instead of forcing them to go out on their own and swim with all the sharks.