No, not him.
Yahoo! Sports, which made a serious name for itself in reporting on NCAA violations by exposing the Reggie Bush-USC fiasco, has now turned its attention to current NCAA inquiry into UNC football. An article posted late Monday says the NCAA is now focusing the connection between UNC assistant coach John Blake and player agent Gary Wichard. The entire article can be found here.
The main question is does Yahoo’s revelations tell us anything about what the NCAA is doing? A little. There are a few items to be gleaned which shed some light as to which rocks the NCAA might be turning over. Wichard, who spent over 90 minutes talking to Yahoo, says he and Blake are friends but says there is nothing the NCAA would find interesting about their relationship. He stresses that if the NCAA is investigating any link between him, Blake and Marvin Austin of a illicit nature it will lead to a dead end. There is a curious part of the interview where Wichard denies Blake ever worked for his sports management agency Pro Tect Management despite a brochure indicating the opposite.
Wichard is also tied to Proactive Sports Performance in California which is where Marvin Austin worked out last summer. Questions as to who paid for his trip had been raised previously in the ongoing probe by the NCAA. Wichard said former UNC player and current San Francisco 49er Kentwan Balmer may have paid for Austin’s Proactive trip(and possibly other trips) which the article says could be an NCAA violation. Apparently having been teammates is not enough of a existing relationship to permit an NFL player from providing for the expenses of a former teammate still in college. If Balmer did so for Austin it could spell trouble but again that is merely speculation since no one is talking at either the NCAA or UNC.
The Yahoo! piece is significant because A) it is the first “legitimate” media source to write about something other than the general platitudes given out by UNC; and B) it suggests the probe goes deeper than the Miami party in May. On the other hand, there are no real revelations in the article that were not already in the public domain. The relationship between Blake and Wichard is well known and Yahoo goes to great lengths to connect the two when Wichard is saying all along they are friends and have worked together (albeit maybe not in the way Wichard asserts). Austin’s trip to work out in California has also been known for quite some time, so it’s not like we are in Woodward and Bernstein territory here.
Ultimately the real story here is the nature of the investigation which appears to be operating on some kind of self sustaining momentum at this point. As the NCAA digs into the various aspects of this case they find new loose threads to tug which possibly leads them to other loose threads. Joe Ovies pointed out on 99.9 The Fan yesterday that the concern for UNC is the scope and direction of the probe. That being said, I am not sure the scope or direction has changed all that much. This still appears to be about Austin, where did he go and who paid for it. The NCAA checking into Wichard-Balmer-Blake connection as it pertains to Austin appears to be a logical extension of the current probe. The only question that should concern UNC is whether the NCAA giving an assistant coach a hard look opens the door to a wider issue for the football program in general. That does not appear to be the case but you never know what other threads the NCAA might find to tug on. The concern is the length of the investigation which drags on longer with each new overturned rock.
It should be noted that as the investigation continues, we are going to continue to see stories like this. Yahoo! broke the USC story and therefore operates with a special credibility when it comes to uncovering these types of issues. If Yahoo! splashes a big headline on the front of their sports page, people take notice and assume(rightly or wrongly) that Yahoo! has something similar to what they reported in the Reggie Bush case. I am not sure that is the case here. For my part and for us here at THF, the NCAA not journalists or ABCers will have the final say on what happened with Marvin Austin, Greg Little and anyone else involved. Their voice is the only one that counts, the rest of it is just noise.My advice to you is treat it as such.
Doc contributed to this post.
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Are you at all concerned that this may indicate that the NCAA is also investigating the coaching staff at UNC-CH? Blake, being a member of said staff, could potentially get the program in a world of trouble.
Nothing in the article says Blake is being investigated per se. It goes like this. Austin went on trips to Miami and CA. Question is raised who paid for those trips? Was it Kentwan Balmer former UNC player? Was it Balmer’s agent Gary Wichard? Wichard and John Blake are friends and have apparently worked together. What bearing does that relationship have on money(if any) provided to Austin especially as it pertains to Austin’s trip to ProActive Sports?
That is the extent of the “investigation into Blake” that we know of. Is there a danger the NCAA finds something else about Blake while looking into this? That could happen but right now there is no evidence it has happened. ABCers want this to turn out that the NCAA discovers Blake was selling crack and using the proceeds to pay recruits. They also want the NCAA to say because a coach is involved it means “lack of institutional control” is in play when I still think you are reaching to get there. For one, “failure to monitor” comes first and if they want to charge UNC with anything that is more likely than going for the big gun. That being said, I still don’t think you are anywhere close to having UNC charged with anything. If the NCAA says something is amiss with Blakes relationship with Wichard then Blake gets to spend more time with his family, Austin ends up suspended for a few games or all season and Wichard becomes target #1 in the NCAA’s crusades vs agents. Remember, this is all about agents. The NCAA wants bring an agent down to make a case to the NFLPA that more oversight is needed. If they can nail one to the wall their goals are satisfied.
Speaking strictly for myself, I am not concerned – yet. The Blake/Wichard relationship has been well-established for over 25 years and the connections the Yahoo article takes such great pains to make are mostly a decade or more old. I know the ABCers have set up Blake as the Boogeyman but if he’s somehow a front man for Gary Wichard and has only funneled him three clients in nearly 10 years, then Blake’s not much of a front man.
Like THF notes above, much of this seems to be a logical extension of the initial inquiry into Austin. I would be far more worried if Yahoo had uncovered something that was not previously known. At this point I don’t discount anything, but I’m not getting my blood pressure up, either. There will be plenty of time for both when Marcus Wilson makes this go away, uh, I mean when the NCAA makes a ruling.
You are correct, nothing says Blake is being investigated.
Did we ever find out if the party in Miami’s was actually an agent’s party? If so, was said agent Wichard?
The bearing of the relationship between Blake and Wichard is that Austin was seen working out at Wichard’s joint. Wichard lied about meeting him, then back tracked and said he told him to go back to school, right? Does the fact that Wichard says that Balmer paid for the trip, with Balmer being a Wichard client, factor into Blake’s relationship? I think the big question is why would Wichard lie about Blake’s former position with his company if there is nothing to hide?
Yes, this is all speculation and whatnot. I do not deny that for a second. However, UNC-CH Fan is also speculating in their defense of the program and Austin. As you have said, we really don’t know much at all, even now, a whopping 27 days into the NCAA’s investigation. Personally, I hope that UNC-CH and Austin are both cleared of any and all wrong doing. The longer this drags out the more I have no clue what is going to wind up coming down in the end.
Thanks for the updates on this developing saga. But as always, I choose to watch and wait for the NCAA to seperate the facts from the BS that surrounds this probe. As you say, the final determination by the NCAA is the only factor that will count and the only outcome that the program needs to fear. Go Heels!!
Who knows why Wichard supposedly lied? Maybe his words got mixed up like Maisel’s audio quotes the other day where the word “don’t” was somehow omitted or maybe Wichard and Blake had a secret love affair during the late 1990′s that he didn’t want his family to know about it. Who knows, and I don’t really care if Wichard lied considering he does not and never has worked for the University of North Carolina. As long as Blake, Austin, and any others affiliated with the North Carolina program told or tells the truth to the NCAA is all that really matters. I just find it funny the ABC crowd finds a brochure from the late 1990′s and a couple questionable quotes from an Agent that is a lifelong friend of John Blake as the big “Gotcha” for proving John Blake is the dirty player paying Bogey Man that opposing fan bases have been bellowing about for sometime now.
Until the NCAA or UNC speaks about specific FACTS related to this investigation then this is nothing more than a bunch of assumptions that skew the anticipated outcome depending on which side of the fence one stands on.