More NCAA looking the wrong way with a recruit

The father of Nebraska quarterback Taylor Martinez has an apparel company named Corn Fed. In June, 2007, the dad signed a licensing agreement that gives Nebraska a 10 percent royalty on Corn Fed products with the Nebraska logo. 13 months later, Martinez signs with the Huskers.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=5970508

What gets me is Tom Osborne's response to it. "... the arrangement was done before we even knew about Taylor Martinez or that we knew he was a football player."

Martinez would have been a sophomore, or, if he had redshirted with Nebraska, a junior, in high school. I find it hard to believe that Nebraska didn't know that Martinez was a football player.

And the NCAA signed off on it.

 

Schools have gotten very good at covering their tracks since the SMU thing.
Families with top recruits suddenly find great new jobs in college towns with great deals on housing.
You read about these things in Sports Illustrated, just almost as an aside, about a story about some stud who went somewhere nobody expected him to go.
There was an article about a guy on Arizona State's hoop team a few years back. Mom got a job in Phoenix, the guy was playing with a high school teammate and their club coach. Hmmmm.

 

There a great girls basketball playter in the Portland area; she's only a freshman but is regarded as one of the top recruits the state has ever produced. Washington fired a veteran assistant coach, a former Pac-10 coach of the year, after 2010 and hired the recruit's dad as an assistant.

He was a high school coach but more importantly, also worked at Nike and was involved with the AAU teams that Nike sponsors. The men's team also hired a coach with Nike/AAU ties.

Street agents with NCAA clearance.

 

There's so much crap that goes on.

High school coaches get jobs as college assistants for delivering players. Parents get jobs as assistant coaches for delivering the right players. I forget the name of the kid, but there was a player at Oregon a few years back whose parents moved across the country and both got jobs with Nike.

 

Idiot tOSU players should have had someone's dad give them free tats.

 

Chris Duhon's mom's house was in foreclosure until Chris signed with Duke. Days after the signing, she was suddenly paid up on the property, then sold the house and got a cushy job in Durham. Funny how that worked.

 

To prepare for signing day several years back I traveled to the home of the top recruit. His family lived in a dump of a house. It was the mother, grandmother and five kids in a two-bedroom house with the smallest bathroom I've ever seen. The mom drove a Buick that was older than any of her kids.

Five months later the kid arrives on campus driving an Escalade.

 

Nutgraf

 

Maurice Morris, from South Carolina. He's now with the Lions, I think.

There were also Olshanskys working at the Nike store in downtown Eugene several years ago.

 

I'd like to see more info before I join the "they're CHEATING!" bandwagon.

Dad says he's had the apparel company since 2000. Should be easy to check. He also has logo deals with Iowa, Iowa State and Northern Iowa — would like to know when they signed their deals with Corn Fed: before or after. Would also like to know if 10 percent is the going rate in these kind of deals, or if Dad's getting a discounted rate at Nebraska.

Too many holes in the article to say Neb's cheating or if this is just an ordinary business transaction with extraordinary results, really.

 

That, I'd agree with.

What I found implausible was Osborne's reaction of "We didn't know he was a football player." Really? Really?

 

Oh, I dunno.

I don't find it outside the realm of possibility that Osborne didn't know Kid Martinez was a strong recruit at the time of the deal... or that he was THAT Martinez, since it's not that distinctive of a name — especially in California, I would imagine. I doubt the AD of any school knows the full family situation of every company the marketing department signs a deal with.

Just sayin'.