More information is emerging as to the scope of the NCAA’s investigation that helps bring a number of things into clearer focus.
ESPN is reporting that the NCAA has now turned its attention to Alabama defensive lineman Marcel Dareus and his attendance at an agent’s party in Miami’s South Beach earlier this summer. This appears to be the incident at the center of the NCAA’s inquiry into both Marvin Austin and South Carolina’s Weslye Saunders.
The ESPN piece notes “The NCAA is trying to determine who paid for the players’ transportation to Miami, and lodging, food and entertainment while they were there.”
The piece also notes that the revelations that Florida’s Maurkice Pouncey may have accepted $100,000 from an agent before last season’s Sugar Bowl are unrelated to the inquiry into Austin, Saunders, and Dareus. But, as 99.9 The Fan’s Joe Ovies tweeted, “If it wasn’t clear before, it is now – NCAA is after agents. Players at UNC, USC, UF & Bama are the collateral.” Update(THF): Ovies expands this tweet into an excellent article that can be found here. Ovies suggests that, given the NCAA’s focus on the agents, UNC’s football program might get by relatively unscathed with only one or two players suspended. This will be much to the chagrin of NCSU fans who Ovies says, “won’t have their Christmas in July.”
In other news:
• Joe Giglio at the N&O reports that Marvin Austin’s Twitter activity may have been begging for someone to take a deeper look. Austin apparently had more than 2,400 tweets and over 100 pictures in his account. Some of those, like pictures of $145 dinner tabs and shopping bags for designer sunglasses (Austin has a known penchant for sunglasses) coming after tweets where he complained of being broke, were certainly attention-grabbers.
On the other hand, Austin is known as a gregarious personality who often spoke (and tweeted) with tongue firmly in-cheek. One of the tweets that has garnered the most attention is the one about “I live In club LIV so I get the tenant rate. bottles comin [sic] like its giveaway”, leading some to check the room rates in Miami near the club and how much champagne goes for at Club LIV. As Giglio notes, however, there’s only one catch – that line is a direct quote from a rap song by Rick Ross called “Sweet Life”. So was Austin really living it up in the club or quoting rap lyrics?
Update(THF): ACC Now has an additional photo from Twitter which shows Little and Austin in Miami on May 15th according to the time stamp. This could be problematic since Little’s father insisted his son was only there during spring break and tweets from Austin showed he was possibly in Miami two weeks later. Multiple trips? Long stays at a lavish club? Quoting rap lyrics? Your guess is as good as mine. Carry on.
• The Carolina football team held its end of the summer team meeting yesterday and apparently the issue of the ongoing NCAA investigation was not discussed, other than to remind the players that Dick Baddour is the only one who speaks for the UNC athletic department.
The team had a motivational speaker and were also reminded to watch what they say on Twitter and other social media. Ya think? I wonder if that was related to T.J. Yates lobbing this zinger at the NCAA?
• THF raised the question yesterday as to whether or not UNC should get preemptive in how it is dealing with the story. Steve Spurrier decried agents in his comments about Weslye Saunders, while Nick Saban took a shot at the NFL in his response to questions about Marcel Dareus.
UNC, on the other hand, has adopted the bunker mentality that may have served it well in the past but is less effective in the internet-based 24-hour news cycle. There has been one official statement, one week ago, confirming the investigation, and that’s it. Butch Davis has said absolutely nothing on the record.
It really is a catch-22: there’s really nothing to say until the investigation is completed, but saying absolutely nothing smacks of either being evasive or aloof. Tom Sorenson of the Charlotte Observer writes a snippy piece today basically taking Davis to task for not spouting off to reporters like Steve Spurrier.
Regardless, with the big Triangle Pigskin Preview coming up on Thursday and the ACC Operation Football next week, so Sorenson and other sportswriters will at least have the opportunity to exact their pound of flesh from Butch. But as THF also noted, he is the anti-Roy in that all his comments are guarded and filtered. May not be much fun for those hoping for something juicy.
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Nice summary THF.
State fans are having the most fun although “Christmas in July” for Heels fans would be a Pack player being named at this point in the NCAA investigation. Of course, I enjoyed how they defended Mario Williams driving 120 mph on I-40 in his Lamborghini a few years ago.
I know I never defended Mario Willaims’ reckless driving, HP.
I’ll say this again, the last thing I want to see is UNC-CH get in trouble. I want your boys to be good, and damned good at that. Just not as good as my boys. I have no ill wishes for anyone, be them UNC-CH players/coaches/fans or Duke ones.
There is no way Austin is clean in this, and it is looking worse for Little as well. Of course, unless Pop’s can show record that he did in fact pay for both the Spring Break trip and the Aquagirl trip.
Hey “Champs”. I’m just basing my claim that State fans are having a field day on the thousands of comments on the local blogs. I would not want State to be in trouble either, for the same reasons you mention.
I’m looking forward to the news conference where Marvin produces his credit card bill(s)……billed to Marvin Austin.
“There is no way Austin is clean in this…”, based on your extensive review of rumors and innuendo? The answer to if he is or isn’t clean is binary so you have a 50% chance of being correct but to state that he’s not clean is a joke. All of this will come out in the wash and we will get all the information, these are public institutions and the freedom of information act applies so we will get the full story, sooner or later.
I think that until there are penalties for the agents that outweigh the benefits this will continue. The kids get hurt, the schools get hurt, the agents get a percentage regardless what happens. Unlike baseball with the farm teams the NCAA is pretty much the pipeline for the NFL. Until the NCAA, NFL and the players union decide to work together we will continue to see this happen.
One thing we agree upon, I want UNC to be a “damned good” football team.
Go Heels!
Actually, I am basing it on Austin’s own words, Leroy. He said he was “tired of being broke” and then started spending money like it was going out of style. Now, maybe broke means something different to me than it does to you or Austin, but when I’m broke I’m not getting $143 meals, Gucci sunglasses, etc.
^^How about if an agent taints the eligibility or amateur status of a player in college then that agent is no longer a licensed agent for players in a corresponding professional sports league (NBA or NFL, etc.). Additionally, a college player should also have a clause in his scholarship agreement that says if he is found guilty of taking illegal benefits from agents during his college tenure, then that player will owe the institution a repayment of scholarship funding that is equal to the amount of benefits received.
If you never make the agents or players financially responsible for these illegal benefits then your control over this behavior is basically just like pissing into the wind.
^agreed–both should be the logical conclusion in this.
^^I think you’re stretching it a bit but I haven’t gone through every post or word that he has written. When I looked at the photos the other day I saw the Gucci logo nestled in with about 100 images of Austin’s little sister and most of them at the bowling alley. I remember when I was in school and I was tired of being broke as well. Again, it will all wash out one way or another.
As to paying the scholarship back, I think we are headed into dangerous waters with that thought. Just work through a few scenarios with a kid that gets caught doing something and ends up working at Krispy Kreme. Football and basketball players get a tremendous amount of academic support and without that lifeline many of them would be ineligible even without the time drain and workload of training and playing. If you can take away the earnings of the agents then you can stop issues like this from happening.