And he is not saying who it is though that horse left the barn last week:
Without ever saying John Wall’s name, University of Kentucky President Lee T. Todd Jr. acknowledged Tuesday that one of the school’s basketball players faces questions about his amateurism that could affect his eligibility. Last week, Southeastern Conference Commissioner Mike Slive told ESPN.com that the UK player was heralded freshman John Wall.
“I think the commissioner made his statement which I’m not sure he intended to make, but he made it,” Todd said after a meeting of UK’s Board of Trustees.
Todd said he felt “very comfortable” with no UK official admitting a question existed on a player’s eligibility until Tuesday because “there’s no reason to expose him to a whole lot of newspaper articles when it’s not necessary till we get a final decision.”
Obviously Kentucky is not happy with SEC Commissioner Mike Slive making Wall’s issue public. This comment is clearly a response to that. Of course the whole reason Slive likely decided to out Wall’s eligibility problem was to put a shot across the bow of Kentucky and John Calipari. Kentucky has a history of running afoul with the NCAA and Calipari left two schools on probation along with vacated Final Four appearances. The pairing of these two means suspicions will abound at the faintest sign of trouble. Slive’s comments were a warning to the Wildcats and their coach that they have neither the credibility or leash to screw around with matters of amateurism where a player is concerned. Especially one everyone and their mother assumed had eligibility issues before he even set foot in Lexington.
I will say this, the interactions between the coaches of the SEC and the league office are a continual source of entertainment.
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Actually, I think this is a much, much bigger story if you piece everthing together. When Slive made his comments, some folks took a look at the NCAA rule and concluded that the WORST CASE SCENARIO FOR WALL was that, because Clifton was an agent, Wall was going to have to pay back some money and sit out a few games.
A few days ago, Coach K said that Ryan Kelly was not being investigated by the NCAA, even though Kelly was on Clifton’s team WHILE CLIFTON WAS AN AGENT. K said it was the relationship of the agent (clifton) and the player (Wall) that was at issue.
If the freaking president of UK (not the athletic director) is talking about Wall’s amateurism, that means Wall could possible not play any games for UK, ever. This is huge.
No wonder the UNC coaching staff has avoided players with Wall’s history. If his situation creates a negative precedent for other players whose coaches have acted as an “agent”, then lots of players will be affected.
It seems crazy that this could take so long to develop. And it seems especially cruel treatment of John Wall, who has clearly made lots of mistakes.
He continues to pay for them!
How about some negative attention and trouble for the adults who put Wall in this position. They should have known better.
That this sort of situation never arises in Carolina basketball is one of the reasons we can take more pride in our program than fans of the very few comparably successful programs can take in theirs.
Now Kentucky has a built in excuse for when the Heels beat them.
The NBA created a monster by requiring kids to wait one year after high school before entering the NBA. Certainly it was done so kids could be evaluated at the college/European level of play.
Roy himself was talking about the changes in recruiting over the years and said something like, “It used to be the kid, the parents and the high school coach involved, now sometimes there are 9 or 10 people around these kids” No wonder issues like this are popping up.
As for Wall, I wouldn’t be shocked if he didn’t play at UK and ends up in Europe. Roy sure showed some good judgement. My inner evil self wishes Wall was at Dook and the RAT was facing this issue.
I’ve said it before, but John Calipari is the absolute dirtiest guy in all of college sports. A complete slime ball. I hope UK gets in trouble and he finally gets his NCAA dings.
I still think MLB has the best rules (at least for the National draft) and the NBA would be best served to adopt something similar.
1. No declaring. Every player is eligible for the first draft following their HS graduation.
2. Once a player goes to college, he is not eligible until he has completed his Junior season or is 21 years of age (RS sophomores).
Obviously, players like LeBron are still going to be drafted very high in the first round, BUT, because teams only have 2 picks and because the pool of college talent will be less depleted (no one-and-dones), I don’t think you will see the NBA taking a lot of HS players in the second half of the 1st round or the 2nd round and risk losing that pick when the player decides to go to college.
^ Agree with that C. Michael and don’t understand why something that obvious isn’t clear to the NBA. That type system has it’s own built in checks and balances and eliminates a lot of the issues we keep seeing brought up. Any player good enough to attract the swarms of human carrion (sorry, meant to say some AAU coaches, “handlers”, et. al.) can go straight to the pros. If they’re not that good they’ll go to college hopefully but would have to stay three years. The buzz seems to be around the big names who are one and doners anyway so that takes them out of the college picture.
As I recall the age limit was supposedly so that these kids would be more mature and better able to handle their finances. One year isn’t gonna change that much for these guys and instead has created a rule that is a nightmare for most head coaches and a circus for the whole of NCAA basketball. Now if you really want to call it what it is – getting these high school kids some exposure to a much more physical game and preparing them for THAT kind of pressure – then at least give them more than one year to do so.
The age limit was partly to prevent these poor 18 year old from having their lives ruined by promises of NBA money and stardom when they supposedly could not handle it. Fancy that, 18 year olds need to be protected from having too much money but we have no qualms about putting an M16 in the hands of an 18 year old and have them defend the country against foreign armies which is a far greater and stressful responsibility than playing a game. In short it is a joke that basketball players need to be matured in college longer when no one ever raises that as an issue for tennis or baseball. If the NBA had a minor league system maybe they would be more willing to follow the baseball model but since they don’t(or rather college is it) they wanted some kind of buffer.
The other factor for the NBA is to put these kids through a one year tryout and college so GMs had a better idea of the potential instead of being stupid trying to draft a kid on the basis of 32 ppg versus guys who were 5-7.
There is also an element with the players association trying to protect veterans as well.