Jeff Jacobs of the Hartford Courant unleashes his rage at the revelation of alleged recruiting violations by the Connecticut men’s basketball program.
The most unsavory element here, far beyond the heavy volume of contacts with former Huskies recruit Nate Miles, is the agent-as-college recruiter role played by a former UConn team manager.
Marc Isenberg of the Money Players blog points out that even claims by former a UConn player, Rip Hamilton, that the manager-turned-agent, Josh Nochimson, stole from him didn’t deter the UConn coaching staff from working with Nochimson to land a deal with Miles.
The NCAA has started looking into the allegations, first reported Wednesday by Yahoo! Sports.
But a full-fledged probe is likely to be a long, drawn-out process, as NCAA probes usually are. What are the chances of a heavy punishment if UConn is found guilty? Keep the following in mind.
Bud Withers of the Seattle Times, writing last summer in Basketball Times (article not online), noticed that the number of major football-playing schools getting probation for major violations has steadily decreased since the 1970s:
“This decade, you can come from South Central L.A., live at the Playboy Mansion and drive a Bentley with a Hollywood starlet riding shotgun, and because of something called plausible deniability, it’s cool.
“As long as the cash cow stays plump, Myles Brand, the NCAA czar, seems to be happy. Nowadays, it’s all about money, and you can’t make any if you’re sitting out of the postseason on probation or off television. In the face of ever-escalating costs and a full ration of women’s sports — very few of which are moneymakers — the mantra is, let it be.”
