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BigNastyDefense
07-21-2010, 11:20 AM
North Carolina, Florida, South Carolina, and now Alabama.

And who knows who will be investigated tomorrow.

The NCAA is investigating all of the above schools for player-agent dealings. This is in the aftermath of the USC scandals involving former running back Reggie Bush and former basketball star OJ Mayo. Both players were paid money by agents and Bush's family was given a house to live in during his time in Los Angeles.

The problem is, agents have many ways to get into touch with players. They have runners who relay messages. Phone calls, text messages, emails. Teams can't watch players 24/7. They can't monitor a player's personal phone or email address. They can't hold their hands on spring break or when they are at home during breaks.

Nick Saban, head football coach at Alabama, said that he is ready for the NCAA to kick the NFL out. No more pre-draft evaluations, no more agents at all, that they could do all that stuff at the combine.

You know what? I agree with Saban.

I think the NCAA should re-write the rules when it comes to NFL Draft entry. Once you declare, you should have just 42 hours to change your mind as long as you don't hire an agent or receive payment for something. After that 42 hours, you've given up your eligibility. The NFL should not be able to give players their draft evaluations until after that 42 hours are up. No more agents on campus what-so-ever.

Will doing these things keep agents from contacting college players? No, they will not. Agents will always find a way. But these are ways to safeguard campuses and teams from the direct contact agents enjoy right now.

SteelCityMan786
07-21-2010, 11:53 AM
Saban is an idiot. They should give them from the day they declare until the current deadline(Which usually is January 15th) to declare. On the second try to declare, then they forfeit their eligibility regardless. That's not fair to the player who may have been thought of at one point to possibly be first round picks but the NFL feels will only be say 3rd-4th round pick at best. Although some guys have been picked earlier then they should have (Brady Quinn is a prime example of that. He should have been either a 7th Round Pick or an Undrafted Free Agent).

If you really want to fix this problem, anyone playing in a Bowl Game SHOULDN'T be able to have any contact with an agent until after the completion of their Bowl Game(Nor should they be able to declare until after it either). In many cases that gives guys between 1-3 Weeks(Pending who plays in the National Title Game).

SteelMember
07-22-2010, 07:45 AM
Saban Has Name For Agents Of Harm (http://alabama.scout.com/2/985421.html)

Alabama coach Nick Saban didn’t talk much about specifics of the 2010 Crimson Tide football team, other than to remind them that this is 2010. The 2009 national championship season has passed, he said. But he did have something to say about agents.

Though Saban was careful to note that the majority of agents are good men who don’t entice players into breaking rules, he had a name for those who do.

“I hate to say this,” he said, “but how are they [agents who break the rules] any better than a pimp?

“I have no respect for people who do that to young people. None. I mean none. How would you feel if they did it to your child?"

What may have been done to one of Saban’s players is jeopardize the eligibility of a potential All-America.

The day before the start of Southeastern Conference Media Days in Birmingham, it was revealed that Alabama defensive end Marcell Dareus was the subject of an investigation being conducted by the compliance office at the university and the NCAA. The Crimson Tide's Saban was first up among 12 coaches in Birmingham Wednesday and spoke to the subject, as had SEC Commissioner Mike Slive preceding him.

As to Dareus, Saban said, “We’re not going to make any comments, nor do we have any information that he did anything wrong or he didn’t do anything wrong. But we’re going to find out with the due diligence that we look for.”

Although there have been reports that Dareus has been declared ineligible for the course of the investigation, the university has not announced that action.

Neither Saban nor Slive suggested that athletes who disobey rules should be excused. As Saban pointed out, there are consequences for the players. There are none for the agents. Saban suggested that it would be the responsibility of the NFL Players Association to take action, such as suspending those agents for a year.

He said, “I think if an agent does anything to affect the eligibility of a college football player, his license ought to be suspended for a year. That’s the only way we’re going to stop what’s happening out there because it’s ridiculous and it’s entrapment of young people at a very difficult time in their lives. And it’s very difficult for the institutions and NCAA to control it, and it’s very unfair to college football.”

He also suggested college football coaches take action.

“We treat the NFL as well as anybody in the United States when they come to the University of Alabama,” Saban said. “If something doesn’t go on from their end of it to control what they’re doing to affect our players, then I’m not sure that same hospitality will be welcomed in the future.

“There are probably three areas of responsibility here. We, as all institutions, have a responsibility to educate our players to make good choices and decisions. We have an outstanding agent education program. Joe Mendes, who has been in the NFL for years, interviews our players, makes booklets, actually has home visits with their families to try to education them on the things that they can and can’t do relative to agents.

“I think that the players have a responsibility to make good choices and decisions about what they do with the agents."

Commissioner Slive pointed out that “Given the surreptitious nature of these matters, it is difficult, if not impossible, for institutions to know what might have taken place.”

He said the conference has spent considerable time and resources dealing with the issue.

“These discussions include a review of current NCAA rules,” Slive said, “which in my view may be as much a part of the problem as they are part of the solution, because the rules make it difficult for student-athletes to seek and obtain the kind of advice in the contest in which they need it to properly evaluate potential opportunities for a career in professional sport.

“Dealing with improper agent conduct has been a challenge for a long time, but not only for intercollegiate athletics, but also for the many good agents who try to follow the rules. It is time to reexamine the NCAA rules that relate to agents.”

“I also think the NFL Players Association has a responsibility to monitor and control what agents do.”

_______________________________________

See Saban Really cares. His team. The players. The game. :rolleyes2:

Alright. Where's all the LSU fans. I know they have nothin' but love for him.

Godfather... :chuckle:

SteelersinCA
07-22-2010, 10:49 AM
I hate when multi-millionaires don't get their way and whine. It's a damned shame.

SteelMember
07-23-2010, 09:11 AM
Expose the NCAA, not the athletes (http://msn.foxsports.com/collegefootball/story/jason-whitlock-expose-ncaa-not-reggie-bush-072210)

JASON WHITLOCK

The NCAA rule book is not the United States Constitution.

If anything, the rule book supporting the bogus concept of “amateur athletics” is akin to the laws that supported Jim Crow, denied women suffrage and upheld slavery.

The architect of the modern NCAA, the organization’s former president, Walter Byers, spelled out all of this in his 1997 mea culpa, “Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting the Student-Athlete.”

Byers wrote: “Today the NCAA Presidents Commission is preoccupied with tightening a few loose bolts in a worn machine, firmly committed to the neo-plantation belief that the enormous proceeds from college games belong to the overseers (administrators) and supervisors (coaches). The plantation workers performing in the arena may only receive those benefits authorized by the overseers.”

Byers was not and is not a Jesse Jackson sympathizer. Byers is a white, right-wing conservative from Kansas. He was the NCAA’s first president (1951-1988) and sole visionary. He admitted creating a monster. His NCAA memoir was his repentance and call for a fundamental overhaul of a corrupt organization.

Reggie Bush is Kunta Kinte, a runaway slave.

The media are slave-catchers, mindless mercenaries crucifying child athletes for following the financial lead of their overseer coaches such as Pete Carroll, Lane Kiffin and Nick Saban.

I graduated from a very good journalism school. Ball State’s program is not the equal of Northwestern’s or Missouri’s, but I feel quite comfortable that I understand the role of journalists.

Journalists are not trained to be attack dogs for morally bankrupt institutions.

At some point, we can recognize that an investigative journalism award and individual career advancement do not justify pretending there is some honor in safeguarding the NCAA’s plantation.

USC is giving back Reggie Bush’s Heisman Trophy. Call me when Pete Carroll gives back a dime. Call me when USC offers a refund to all the people who purchased Reggie Bush jerseys.

Call me when the phony moralizing stops and we, the media, quit demonizing black kids for cashing in like white men.

If you read this column regularly, you know I’m fond of the TV show "The Wire" and making Wire-related analogies. The pursuit of Reggie Bush and his Heisman Trophy is the equivalent of police commissioner Ervin Burrell demanding a “buy-bust sting” and “dope on the table.”

It’s a publicity stunt. Everyone is falling for it. It’s working so well that Nick $aban had the audacity to climb on his LSU-Dolphins-Alabama high horse and claim that the rules-breaking street agents are pimps.

It takes one to know one, Nick “Mr. White Folks” Saban.

Pack journalism must die. My industry/profession has sold the NCAA lie for too long. We’ve served as the NCAA’s volunteer investigative unit for 40 years.

Why?

We know exactly what Byers knows and admitted: amateur athletics is a for-profit scam.

Television and money perverted college football and basketball a generation ago. Coaches and administrators are making millions. The athletes are being compensated in a currency (a shot at a compromised education in their spare time) many of them don’t respect and haven’t been properly prepared to use. The NCAA takes most of the money generated by football and men’s basketball and invests it in welfare sports that don’t generate a dollar and are played mostly by kids who have nothing in common with the football and basketball players who produced the revenue.

Add in that we now have a far better understanding of the long-term health risks associated with playing football and it’s even more clear why these young people can’t resist taking what’s offered to them.

Reggie Bush is Kunta Kinte.

The media are going to chop his Heisman Trophy off, drag him back to USC’s plantation and let new athletic director Pat Haden lash his legacy in front of Chicken George, Fiddler and Kizzy.

And several reporters will get promotions, pay raises and a few plaques for “catching” Reggie Bush.

I have a great deal of respect for the reporters at Yahoo Sports, the media outlet that has led the Bush investigation. But I have no respect for the NCAA rule book. I have no respect for the sports journalism-awards culture that rewards NCAA rules-violation stories.


Yahoo Sports has done awesome work exposing financial links between summer basketball kingpins, the Pump brothers, and high-profile college basketball coaches and administrators. I mention this because I don’t want to create the impression that reporters I respect solely focus on supporting out-of-date NCAA/amateur athletics rules.

But this Reggie Bush story has infuriated me. I’ve listened to too many talking heads shred Bush and street agents as though they’re the problem in college athletics.

The problem is the lie, the original sin, the myth that our society is enhanced by protecting the fallacy of “amateur athletics.” Rather than destroy Reggie Bush and his Heisman Trophy, aggressive, righteous journalists should work to destroy the NCAA and every other institution in support of the amateur lie.