Happy Monday Cougs. As always, here’s hoping that you had a great weekend and are ready to get back into the grind of your week, whoever you are/wherever you are. Anyway, thought it would be a good idea to get the week started off on the right foot by checking out some stuff out there for your consumption, link style. Read on for more…..
Cougfan has been rolling with the offseason diaries this summer, and it’s Tyree Toomer and Marshall Lobbestael weighing in on what’s up this summer. I know, I know, some of it sounds like stuff that you have heard before. But this year they’ve been taking questions from the fans, and it is has been some pretty good reading material thus far (and they are free!). And as Toomer mentions in his latest entry, you can’t help but be impressed by the level of effort being shown by a lot of these guys in the summer. Seriously, college age kids up at 6 am in July to work out? I know that’s the norm during the season, but it’s great to see them up and at it so early.
The Peyton/Eli/Cooper/Archie Manning Passing Academy is underway down in Thibodaux, LA. If you haven’t heard, it’s a summer camp where the Manning family gets together with players on the NCAA and high school level to work on their passing game abilities of all levels. Some of the nation’s top NCAA passers are there, including Andrew Luck, Landry Jones of Oklahoma, and Jordan Jefferson of LSU. And Jon Gruden is even there, tutoring the young QB’s, and popping the collar no less!
That’s Gruden in the black polo shirt, watching Miami’s Jacory Harris in his drop. Aren’t men of a certain age just NOT supposed to pop the collar?!? Maybe it’s a Tampa/Florida thing. Actually I love Gruden and have been really entertained by his ESPN series with all the top draft prospects this spring.
Anyway, one name that was mentioned last year as looking pretty good in the Manning camp, but hasn’t been mentioned this year? Our own #10, Jeff Tuel. While they don’t release an “official” list of which NCAA QB’s are actually there, from all accounts thus far, there is no report of Tuel. Maybe Tuel decided to hang back in Pullman this year and work out with the team? Marshall Lobbestael mentioned Tuel in one of his early diaries as a guy who was organizing these offseason team workouts. It would be hard to believe he wasn’t invited back to the Manning camp for this summer after doing well last summer. We’ll keep looking for his name out there, but it doesn’t appear he made the trek this year?
So, is Chip Kelly going to survive this whole thing at Oregon!?!?
Or, is he simply a “patsie” and will be taken out before he can really talk!? It’s a weird deal, this whole player scouting service thing. But the reality is that yeah, Oregon paid this Lyles guy $25 K for information on recruits, and that information turned out to be old and outdated, as well as being delivered about 10 or so months after they cut Mr. Lyles the check. And Lyles had some direct involvement with LaMichael James and Leche Seastrunk. AND, there is some sort of a paper trail, with hand written notes from Kelly to Lyles. It’s hard to spin stuff like this?
But Lyles has reportedly provided the same service for several other programs, including LSU and Cal. And what, exactly, are the rules for these recruiting services?? It seems like a really gray area, doesn’t it?
We’ll see what happens with the NCAA. With so much dirt after the Ohio State scandal of late, and USC the year before, you just wonder if Oregon is simply next on the hit list. But the process still has to play out. If Oregon is guilty of being stupid for buying outdated recruiting information and getting it almost a year after paying for it, well, that’s an OREGON problem isn’t it? But if they didn’t appear to break any rules, at least on paper, then what can they do? I guess it will all boil down to what Chip Kelly and the rest of those involved said – or didn’t say – to NCAA investigators. As we saw with Ohio State and also to an extent, USC, if you are dishonest with the NCAA it will be costly! But if Kelly and rest told the truth, and they can’t really prove that any NCAA rules were violated, then maybe he will come out clean on the other side?
I did hear one account from Brock Huard on KIRO as the Yahoo report was breaking news. He said that Mike Bellotti told him last year that he got some flak from some people down in Texas after the Ducks had some success recruiting LaMichael James, Darron Thomas and Leche Seastrunk from down in the Longhorns back yard in recent years. You wonder if some in Texas have decided to tip off the NCAA about the Ducks involvement in all this due to being simply pissed off at Oregon playing in the BCS title game last year, led by Darron Thomas and LaMichael James, while the ‘Horns were home for the holidays after a losing season!?? Isn’t that the way a lot of these things go down, where a program gets mad at another program, they get some dirt, then spill the beans? I know some UW’ers still blame the USC folk for their massive probation almost 20 years ago, based on SC’s jealousy of UW’s success with several SoCal recruits, pillaged right from the Trojans back yard?
All for now. Enjoy your Monday, and as always, GO COUGS!
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