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Hey NCAA, why don't you just give it up and let Miami go

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Stony157

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Great call by CBS Sports writer Dennis Dodd...

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/story/21604840/hey-ncaa-give-it-up

Hey NCAA, why don't you just give it up and let Miami go
Dennis Dodd
By Dennis Dodd | Senior College Football Columnist
Jan. 23, 2013 4:22 PM ET

139 | Comments

NCAA prez Mark Emmert: 'I've never seen anything like this and I don't want to see it again.' (US Presswire) NCAA prez Mark Emmert: 'I've never seen anything like this and I don't want to see it again.' (US Presswire)

The Miami case is now tainted beyond reason. We know that now. Mistrial. Throw it out, NCAA. Move on, NCAA. You've lost face -- and perhaps the credibility to ever investigate anyone again.

Now the overarching question after Wednesday's staggering news of NCAA impropriety in the Miami case becomes: Is the enforcement process, as we know it, done? Dead? Kaput?

Is it time to outsource the most controversial department of a highly controversial non-profit, tax-exempt -- though extremely powerful -- giant?

The answer would seem to scream, yes. The NCAA paid for the services of Nevin Shapiro attorney Maria Elena Perez to conduct depositions in a federal bankruptcy case in order to get evidence of NCAA violations, a source told CBSSports.com. That's not only improper, it's possibly illegal.


"This is obviously a shocking affair ...," Emmert said. "It is stunning this has transpired."

The worst day in the association's 62-year history of enforcement may signal the end of days for NCAA cops.

Connecting the dots, it seems that Elena Perez was hired as a mole. She became a de facto NCAA investigator while the NCAA was investigating her client. Hey, anything to find dirt on Miami. Conventional laws don't apply to the NCAA. It doesn't have to use conventional due process, which has led to some wildly unconventional outcomes.

This places the Penn State and USC cases -- for starters -- in a whole new light. Emmert used unprecedented -- and unknown -- powers to eviscerate Penn State football as punishment for a creep former assistant coach being allowed to prey on young boys. The NCAA already is fighting two lawsuits on that front.

The association is also being sued by former USC assistant Todd McNair for defamation of character. McNair was blamed by the NCAA for knowing about Reggie Bush's improper benefits. McNair's lawyers say the NCAA violated its own rules and procedures in investigating their client. The NCAA is seeking to keep sealed possibly damning information that would detail that enforcement process.

Now this incredibly complicated, embarrassing and possibly game-changing issue for the NCAA.

"It was a matter who she [Elena Perez] was representing in the case at that point in time," Emmert said Wednesday during a conference call.

Exactly. In its -- let's say zeal -- to prosecute Miami, the NCAA seemingly played both ends against the middle. The association may have also improperly involved itself in a federal bankruptcy proceeding. Shapiro is broke and sitting in jail, guilty of an elaborate Ponzi scheme. That looks practically tame compared to what's going on in Indianapolis at the moment.

Emmert may be getting a call from the Justice Department soon.

The Miami case was increasingly flawed. Yahoo! Sports basically did the NCAA's work for it 1½ years ago. It had Shapiro from jail with boxes of records and receipts ratting out Miami. Why in the name of Paul Dee did the NCAA have to go any further? You may question Shapiro's credibility in damning Miami to the depths of NCAA ****, but the joke was once made: The association could rely on the testimony of a ham sandwich if it helped their case.

Pass the mustard. Using a convicted felon (Lloyd Lake) in the USC case almost seems acceptable by comparison.

The association has played the bully in the past. This time it just played dumb.

There are those of you snickering right now knowing the enforcement process has been flawed for decades. But in this case alone, an NCAA investigator has been fired. An NCAA official wrote a letter to former Miami players basically threatening to blackmail them if they weren't forthright with information. Now, it is discovered that the NCAA has the attorney of the case's central figure on retainer.

And no one at the NCAA knew about it?

Blow it up. Start over. The NCAA contracts out for its drug testing. Why not do the same thing for enforcement? Emmert started an external review of enforcement Wednesday by retaining a high-powered corporate lawyer. Maybe Kenneth Wainstein's firm would be interested in establishing an NCAA enforcement wing.

Obviously oversight is lacking. Emmert is ultimately responsible. How can you not know the ongoing details of the most high-profile case in the organization? Emmert said the wrongdoing came about in December 2011 and January 2012. The NCAA found out months later when expense reports were turned in.

"It immediately raised a question, where the heck did this come from," Emmert said.

I asked who would have signed off on such a move. Emmert said the office of general counsel Donald Remy. But, Emmert added, the issue never reached Remy's desk.

That suggests that for a period of months an investigator at the NCAA was allowed to go cowboy and hire Elena Perez without oversight. Wouldn't we all love that expense account?

"I've only been here 2½ years, but in my 2½ years I've never seen anything like this and I don't want to see it again," Emmert said.

He may not have to. There have been wheels in motion now to change the process. Let's start in Washington, D.C., where Congress might be interested in that tax-exempt status. Wednesday was too much. The enforcement was flawed before. Now it's wrong, mean-spirited, perhaps in this case even flirting with breaking the law.

Miami should be free to go, because the NCAA overseeing enforcement has to go.
 
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I read it more underhanded than it needed to be, but I just don't care what route we take to get this over with.
 
Another authoritative figure thinking the sanctions will be reduced

Bylaw Blog writer weighs in on UM case after NCAA bombshell drops Wednesday

After Wednesday's bombshell fell from the lips of NCAA President Mark Emmert, I reached out to our friend John Infante, a former compliance officer at NCAA Division I schools who runs the Bylaw Blog.

Infante's expertise has been featured on ESPN, Sports Illustrated, USA Today and numerous other media outlets. Keep in mind he isn't privy to the information the NCAA has on Miami. He simply is giving his opinion based on what he's read from published reports and heard today.

Here is the transcript of my 20 minute, one-on-one Q&A with him today:

Q: How does this affect Miami? Most people assume here that the NCAA admitting its made mistakes in the investigation will be positive for Miami. Some think they might even just settle.

"It definitely will be positive. But I think people -- when they think positive -- it's significantly reduced sanctions. To me, that remains to be seen. I know President Emmert said in his press conference that this affected only a small portion of the information in the case. They still have to go through and find out exactly which allegations or specific violations [can't be used]. I don't know how much the NCAA follows the fruit of the [poisonous] tree doctrine -- which basically says if you gather information you wouldn't otherwise have gotten without the use of an improper lead, you can't use that new information either. But anything the NCAA cannot corroborate is helpful for Miami. The fewer student-athletes, the fewer former coaches, the less money, the fewer violations involved the better the case will be [for UM]. The question now is if it is going to better enough to result in a significantly different set of penalties."

Q: A lot of the investigative reports -- including Yahoo!'s -- came from the depositions and information through Shapiro's lawyer Maria Elena Perez. How could the NCAA still have much of a case if you have to wipe out whatever Shapiro's lawyer was involved with?

"Again, you have to wonder if the NCAA could have gotten this another way. It could be they look through their reports -- I don't know who makes this determination the law firm or the NCAA -- but they may say, 'We got this through this [improper] deposition, but then here's the other document we obtained properly that has the same information in it.' So I think you balance it with the idea that they wouldn't try to get subpeona power unless what they got was a game changer or real effective. The extreme [position] that the whole case is going to be gone, the NCAA certainly doesn't sound like the whole case is going to be gone. It sounds like something significant is still there... I think there is a big range -- in the middle -- of what exactly the case was going to look like. Frankly, the other problem is we don't know what the case would have looked like before. We know what Yahoo!'s case would have been and other media outlet's cases would have been. But nobody knows exactly, specifically what the NCAA has been able to corroborate given this abusive power. So, it's tough to know what was knocked out when we aren't even sure what's going to be in there in the first place."

Q: Worst day in NCAA history in terms of them policing themselves?

"As President Emmert said they've had better days. It's certainly up there. It's certainly one of the darkest days in NCAA history in terms of its investigative power. The thing to remember is that in these kind of scandals with the NCAA's investigative process that have come out in the last year -- Todd McNair's defamation case; the Shabazz Muhammad case and now this -- the NCAA has been accused of not following its own rules. One of the responses might be that the NCAA just had some bad seeds and 'we're going to clear out the bad apples that spoil the bunch. We're going to clear out the staff and we're going to have more money to bring in professional investigators and move on from there.' I think the real kind of devastating thing [for the NCAA] is if the courts say you followed procedure to a T and we're still ruling that improper. Then, that calls into question the entire way the NCAA does it's business rather than the idea that investigator or that investigator went rogue. The NCAA is dealing with the same sort of problems athletic departments deal with. There is a violation; now we got to find out what it is and fix it. Did the coach go rogue? Did the investigator go rogue? Did we fail to monitor? I know people are making jokes about it. People have asked me: 'Why would something like this happen?' Coaches are expected to deliver results and they cut corner sometimes. I think in a public case like this --- where the public says 'We had all the facts 15 months ago why isn't Miami punished yet?' -- there is that pressure to get your man, to deliver a result. Well, there would be pressure in that case also for an investigator to cut a corner."

Q: Isn't this unprecedented, the NCAA admitting it made a mistake before a notice of allegations isn't even sent?

"Yes. The leak of info with [UCLA basketball player] Shabazz Muhammad, we found out about that after he had been ruled ineligible and while they were appealing. It was kind of mid-process whereas this is kind of right before [the NOA]. In terms of how it helps Miami, I don't know if procedurally it really does [help] because you would hope that if the NOA went out and then the NCAA [did what it did Wednesday the NOA] would be pulled back and the NCAA would be doing exactly what it is doing now, which is pulling back and seeing what information should be in there and then re-doing the notice of allegations with the info it should have. Really, what it does is it delays [the case], but it doesn't delay it as long [as it could have been] because the NCAA would have had to restart its 90-day timeline. It sounds like the NCAA is fairly confident they can turn this around quickly. They're saying this is a delay of weeks rather than months. In terms of the timing of it, I really don't think its helpful for Miami in terms of what the penalties will be. I think it prevents a really long case from being delayed longer than it is now."

Q: Some people are thinking Miami can pounce here legally and say -- you fired these investigators, you went about this the wrong way, whole thing is a sham -- can Miami do anything here to put pressure on the NCAA that would help solve this case faster and lessen the penalties?

"That's tricky for all the parties involved because you are still down by the cooperative principal. You still have to cooperate with the NCAA's investigation. For Miami [to sue or fight it] that's a very high risk maneuver. Everything in this case has suggested that up until now they're not really putting up a fight. They might be exhausting their options to defend themselves, not digging in their heels to fight it every step of the way. I think the more likely scenario is Miami lets this play out and if the sanctions or the findings that come out of the committee on infractions' final report are excessive, I think that's the point Miami picks up on this and uses [Wednesday's announcement] as grounds for a lawsuit. Miami doesn't look like it's going to fight it like that. They're more likely to appeal anything now. But in terms of suing the NCAA that's always a drastic step. Very few schools have done it. It's generally individuals. As far as the individual coaches, a lot of them are still employed and working. If they had been fired or not working I think they would be much more likely to pounce on this and try to get themselves detached and the case thrown out. But since they're working, I think it's going to be more of a wait and see what their penalties are and if it harms their career. I can almost guarantee there will be a couple lawsuits against the NCAA trying to say this whole thing, none of it is proper."

Q: The NCAA is going to a new enforcement system in August. Can they avoid these similar problems from happening again?

"The new system doesn't really address what happens here. The new system is really more about penalties. It doesn't address how cases get to this point. Depending on the outcome of this external review -- and kudos for the NCAA being up front about it, talking about it publicly let's hope this continues -- I think this leads to a whole new initiative. This is not an isolated issue. This is kind of the third incident. Fool me once shame on you; full me twice shame on me. Three times is a trend. I do think it requires a big change. What that change is it's tough to say. I think the NCAA may take a more serious look at what people are calling them to do which is handing off investigations to third parties or creating an internal affairs unit. If this is a result of public pressure and an underfunded, undermanned enforcement staff, I'm not necessarily sure those things will fix the problem long term other than creating the same type of cycle where schools get caught, clean things up, fall off a little bit and break rules again. The NCAA isn't in a position or the public standing to keep things the same way. They have to come up with something to address this problem long term to sort of regain any public trust."

Q: Gut feeling in the end: Does Miami gets off easier?

"At this point I would be shocked about another post-season ban. I also would be surprised to see crippling scholarship penalties. I do think they will be let off a little easier than they would have been. The biggest challenge now for the NCAA is to explain [to other school] in a way that Miami didn't get a break on a technicality. That won't sit well with people either."

Read more here: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/umia...-bombshell-drops-wednesday.html#storylink=cpy
 
Whatever is whatever. Fact is we don't have a ******* clue what would even have been proven. Why? Because people are taking Yahoo's wild *** article as a collection of facts. They're not necessarily. I'd still take something really small, like 10-15 scholarships over 3 years, and be done with all of it.
 
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One of the few times I agree with almost everything Infante had to say (I won't count his opinion on possible sanctions, since anyone's guess is hogwash).
 
MIAMI's attorneys HAVE TO be all over this.

All of the shapiro's assets were measured and evaluated during the bankruptcy case. Since the information gathered from this case by Enforcement was obtained "improperly" the Notice of Allegations should be reduced significantly, imo.

Emmert has admitted Maria Perez was ON THE PAYROLL of the ncaa. He still has to find out: What was the nature of that contractual arrangement [between ncaa investigators and Perez]? What was all the activity that she was involved with? How did this individual engage in these activities on the ncaa's behalf?”

IMO, the two parties conspired to get this info out and use it against MIAMI. Even when MIAMI has complied to the fullest, providing "THOUSANDS of documents to enforcement." MIAMI has tremendous leverage in determining penalties and the ncaa wants to get this over as quickly as possible.

WE SKATE
 
Miami gives the NCAA the best chance to save face, and we should use that to our advantage. It would still be unprecedented for us to get more than a two year bowl ban for anything short of child rape. Why not (privately negotiated, of course) admit our wrongdoing, and say the sanctions were deserved regardless of process improprieties. No need to sue. The NCAA then lets us off the hook for anymore punishment and everyone wins (meaning Miami and the NCAA, and I only want the NCAA to win if it helps Miami, everyone else can go **** themselves).
 
More than ten schollies? **** that.

Light 'em up if we get one iota more than Boise, OSU, or UCF.

Time served, or we'll see you in court.

/deep pockets
 
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Biscuits said:
More than ten schollies? **** that.

Light 'em up if we get one iota more than Boise, OSU, or UCF.

Time served, or we'll see you in court.

/deep pockets
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This. Before, when this first came out, I would have been happy with something like UNC's penalty. Now? **** that. They had the largest academic cheating scandal in history and the NCAA just said "not our problem." Between this and the other embarrassment of that Gator **** sending our guys ultimatums, we should say "**** you, not happening" to anything more than what OSU got(would still be worse considering the 2 post season bans). They've not only proven that this is a witch hunt, they went so far as to break their own rules to make sure they get the results they wanted. They should be looking to cut a deal with us rather than face further public embarrassment.
 
Chicken_N_Roffles said:
Biscuits said:
More than ten schollies? **** that.

Light 'em up if we get one iota more than Boise, OSU, or UCF.

Time served, or we'll see you in court.

/deep pockets
Click to expand...

This. Before, when this first came out, I would have been happy with something like UNC's penalty. Now? **** that. They had the largest academic cheating scandal in history and the NCAA just said "not our problem." Between this and the other embarrassment of that Gator **** sending our guys ultimatums, we should say "**** you, not happening" to anything more than what OSU got(would still be worse considering the 2 post season bans). They've not only proven that this is a witch hunt, they went so far as to break their own rules to make sure they get the results they wanted. They should be looking to cut a deal with us rather than face further public embarrassment.
Click to expand...

Shalala's statement tells me she plans on forcing the NCAA to go easy on us, or she's going to have Mark Emmert's head as a paperweight.
 
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Honestly I think its very possible if we push the issue we can get time served and be done with it
 
We flip the script and the NCAA gives us 2 bowl games of our choice, to be played this off-season. And players get unlimited access to dark visors again.

done
 
Stony157 said:
Yahoo! Sports basically did the NCAA's work for it 1½ years ago. It had Shapiro from jail with boxes of records and receipts ratting out Miami. Why in the name of Paul Dee did the NCAA have to go any further? You may question Shapiro's credibility in damning Miami to the depths of NCAA ****, but the joke was once made: The association could rely on the testimony of a ham sandwich if it helped their case.
Click to expand...

This is my problem, this is a load of ****.

They had to go further because of all the bull ****, the source (NS) had a personal vendetta against UM and all the uncorroborated testimony (Biased Sources).

Denis Dodd is still a ****. If they want to throw it out and people think we're guilty, whatever. Usually you don't try to do all these insane tactics when the case is in the bag.
 
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