\nBut this overall dynamic has been going on for decades. Former Kentucky assistant coach Dwane Casey got a five-year show cause penalty as part of a multilevel scandal there. His boss, Eddie Sutton, proclaimed his innocence, but he resigned and had another job (at Oklahoma State) 13 months later. People thought that was unfair. That was 1989.<\/p>\n
Two basketball staffers resigned amid an investigation at Connecticut in 2010. The school was hit with sanctions in February 2011 that included a two-year show cause for one of those staffers\u2014and a three-game suspension the following season for head coach Jim Calhoun, who kept his job. \u201cHe has encouraged compliance,\u201d the school said. Less than two months later, Calhoun led UConn to the national title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\nBy the fall of 2012, after everyone’s intelligence had been sufficiently insulted, the NCAA decided it needed to tighten that loophole. It passed legislation that said, \u201can institution’s head coach is presumed to be responsible for the actions of all institutional staff members who report, directly or indirectly, to the head coach.\u201d That was lauded, in one law journal for a firm that did work in the college sports space, as follows: \u201cUnder the new enforcement structure, coaches will no longer be able to plead they ‘just didn’t know’ to avoid sanctions. Instead, they will be presumed to know about their program’s violations unless they prove otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n\nHow naive it was to think that would actually work. Coaches (and their lawyers) found the workaround. Hold meetings, fill out forms, visit the compliance office\u2014create the Book of Truth\u2014and behold, an atmosphere of compliance was born. Busywork shall deliver the head coach caught in a bind.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen the FBI scandal erupted in September 2017, the coaches were arrested all Black assistants: Richardson of Arizona; Chuck Person of Auburn; Lamont Evans of Oklahoma State; Tony Bland of USC. As this snaked its way through court, the voices of Miller and LSU coach Will Wade were caught on wiretap talking to aspiring agent Christian Dawkins. Kansas’ Bill Self was texting with Adidas bagman TJ Gassnola. Louisville’s Rick Pitino was embroiled in his umpteenth scandal. The expectation was that\u2014this time\u2014there might actually be an NCAA price for the head coaches to pay.<\/p>\n\nThen the IARP came stumbling onto the stage like Inspector Clouseau. Turning over the NCAA’s biggest and most complex cases ever to an investigative pop-up shop with no experience in its esoteric realm will go down as one of the worst decisions in the history of an association rife with terrible ideas. Outsourcing the controversial work was so Mark Emmert that it hurts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAfter unconscionable delay and expense, the IARP has cleared four of its six cases. The scorecard: no significant sanctions for the schools; no sanctions at all for the active head coaches; and show cause penalties are flying at the assistants. One from North Carolina State got six years; two from Louisville got two years each; and now the combined 12 years for Richardson and Phelps.<\/p>\n\nThe IRP hearing panel noted that it was \u201cintentional\u201d in not applying penalties that would affect players who had no connection to the violations at Arizona. That’s consistent with what it did at Louisville, North Carolina State and Memphis (which was not a FBI-related case). That’s fine and fair. <\/p>\n
Yet when a school is caught up in bribery and a five-figure payment to commit academic fraud, and the head coach catches none of it, that’s a bad look built on the flimsy premise of plausible deniability. As one former coach said Wednesday in a text message: \u201cHow do you think they could possibly justify zero (for Miller) and 10 years (for Richardson)? They were in the same office, homes, cars, hotels and had worked side-by-side for years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\nBut there were meetings and paperwork and compliance visits \u2026 and the Book of Truth. Which made one other appearance in the hearing panel’s report.<\/p>\n
It pertained to one of Miller’s wiretapped conversations with Dawkins about who was offering what to recruits. Specifically, Dawkins \u201casking for $150,000 to direct (a prospect) to Arizona.\u201d Miller said at that point he \u201chad reason to be suspicious\u201d of Dawkins and distanced himself from him.<\/p>\n\nFrom the infractions report: \u201cThe hearing panel notes that although (Miller) has maintained that the solicitation of $150,000 from (Dawkins) caused him to immediately end their relationship, he did not document the phone call about the attempted bribe in his ‘Book of Truth,’ nor did he report the incident to the institution’s compliance office until after (Richardson’s) arrest, which occurred approximately one week after the attempted solicitation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some truths, it turns out, are better left undocumented.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n