Oregon’s day of judgment before the NCAA came today, and while they got away with a little more than a stern finger-wag for paying a handler $25,000 to steer recruits to Eugene, they didn’t receive a bowl ban or heavy loss of scholarships. What they did lose includes one scholarship for each of the next two years, a number of official recruiting visits and evaluation days, and the ability to subscribe to recruiting services.
This means instead of paying people like Willie Lyles to deliver recruits or visiting Rivals, Scout, or 27/7 sites repeatedly, they’ll have to rely on their reputation, coaches ability to sell the program, special Nike satellites we don’t even know about, and Bob Stoops’ equipment manager who watches recruiting videos on YouTube (“HELLO”). In other words, they don’t lose too much.
On the other hand, Mississippi State, hit with sanctions a few weeks ago stemming from a booster providing extra benefits to a recruit along the same lines as Lyles, lost two scholarships for each of the next two seasons, plus recruiting visits, had an assistant fired, and will have the benefit-receiving player suspended for the first five games of 2013. As usual, the NCAA followed a pretty strict set of guidelines when determining proper punishment.*
*I should note former Oregon head coach Chip Kelly also got slapped with an 18-month show-cause stamp, which means it will be very hard for him to coach in college football for a while. I hope he thinks long and hard about what he’s done while cashing his paychecks from the Philadelphia Eagles.
While Mississippi State could complain and shout and scream about the NCAA taking it easy on a school with such a high profile, Dan Mullen refuses to do so. Mostly because unlike Oregon, Mississippi State retains the ability to use recruiting subscription services.
If they had lost the right to subscribe to those sites, it would have been quite the pain in the ol’ keester for Mullen to change things around in his recruiting nerve center.
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