How bad is this for Oregon?

Things certainly aren't looking well for them: http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=ys-robinson_scout_details_deal_oregon_kelly_070111. Once again, good investigative work by Yahoo!

 

possibly bad for Oregon. but what was Lyles caught doing that he would report this and ruin what probably was a nice income.

 

You know, I've been reading this stuff, and I have no idea. (And let me preface this by pointing out my significant bias as an Oregon alum.)

I mean... is this even a violation? Yes, it seems shady as hell. But the standard set in the Cam Newton case seems to be that as long as you don't write the check directly to the player, you're golden.

The Yahoo piece was certainly... long. I kept waiting for the smoking gun and never saw it. So, the team paid scouting money to a guy close to top players who didn't really do much in the way of scouting? Eh...

I'm perfectly willing to believe that there's something heinous to this that I'm just missing, but this barely registered for me compared to what the NCAA is willing to ignore.

 

definitely is shady. plus the way they say 'Kelly approved the payment.' WTF is that. the guy runs a scouting service and charges. approved the payment makes it sounds like Oregon was paying for something else.

 

You have to remember that all kinds of schools have all kinds of programs and ways to scout players. There's an incredibly popular program - the name escapes me - that nearly all schools subscribe to, where all kinds of detailed information on players is logged, tracked, analyzed and sorted in any means necessary.

The fact that one guy instead kept these sorts of charts on players who were in Texas and then charged Oregon $25,000 to ask them doesn't seem like it's that big of a deal. As it's been shown, it's not like he was steering players to Oregon, nor were they asking him to.

However, with the Newton saga recently behind us (around us?), things like this are going to get much more publicity than they ever could have, and perhaps should have, received in the past.

 

After the shit Auburn got away with, they're gonna need a WHOLE lot more than that if they're gonna nail somebody other than Directional State's ass to the wall.

/bitter Gamecock?

 

Of course, this is the money that is reported. I have no doubt there is other money out there finding its way to Lyles.
I figured Oregon was going this way when they pushed Bellotti and their last real AD, Bill Moos - out and turned things over to Phil Knight.
Kelley's been in Eugene for four years, I get the impression he is a cog in the machine, and getting him out of the picture won't change things.

 

The smoking gun here is that Oregon paid $25,000 for a 2010 scouting service that turned out to be filled solely with players who graduated in 2009. There is an email record of Oregon officials, I believe including Chip Kelly, acknowledging that they were just looking for any way they could to retroactively justify the payment.

And that's just the blatant rules violation. There's also a whole lot of "where there's smoke there's fire" around the Oregon program, particularly with Cliff Harris' rental car and just how in the hell Darron Thomas ended up choosing them from his home in Houston.

It's early in the investigation, but it's not hard to see how Oregon might have a different coach for that LSU opener.

 

Any word on this yet?

 

I think Oregon ceding of control to many aspect of their Ath. Dept. ops to Nike screams lack of institutional control.

 

You and I interpret the Yahoo! report very differently.

 

George Schroeder of the ERG has done some great pieces on this sordid affair. The latest: http://www.registerguard.com/web/sports/26489463-41/lyles-oregon-coaches-rules-saying.html.csp