Will Lyles says Oregon paid him for 'my access and influence with recruits'Comments 0By Erick Smith, USA TODAYUpdated 1m agoWill Lyles, who is at the center of the NCAA investigation of Oregon's football program, said in an interview to Yahoo! Sports that he was paid by the school for more than scouting reports.Oregon has admitted paying Lyles $25,000 in connection with his company Complete Scouting Services.Documents released by the school last month show it received outdated recruiting information from Lyles, who said Oregon coach Chip Kelly said "scrambled" in late February and asked Lyles to submit retroactive player profiles to justify payment."They said they just needed anything," Lyles told Yahoo! Sports. "They asked for last-minute [stuff]. So I gave them last-minute [stuff] … I gave them, like, old stuff that I still had on my computer because I never thought that stuff would see the light of day."Lyles said he spoke to the NCAA for six hours in May."I look back at it now and they paid for what they saw as my access and influence with recruits," Lyles told Yahoo! Sports. "The service I provided went beyond what a scouting service should … I made a mistake and I'm big enough of a man to admit I was wrong."About a month before Oregon's payment to Lyles, running back Lache Seastrunk signed with the Ducks. Lyles has been described as having a mentoring relationship with Seastrunk. Lyles also attended an awards banquet last December as a guest of Oregon running back and Heisman Trophy candidate LaMichael James.Lyles spoke in detail to Yahoo! Sports about working with Oregon to have Seastrunk's grandmother sign his letter of intent because his mother did not want him to attend school there.Lyles also said he advised James to transfer to an Arkansas high school as a senior so that he would avoid taking a standardized test required to graduate in Texas.Oregon spokesman Dave Williford would not comment on the specifics of Lyles statements."Our stance hasn't changed from our original statement," Williford told Yahoo! Sports. "We believe we did nothing wrong."Kelly, who Yahoo! Sports said did not return their calls, defended his school's relationship in March during an interview with ESPN.com."Most programs purchase recruiting services," Kelly said. "Our compliance office is aware of it. Will has a recruiting service that met NCAA rules and we used him in 2010."
Damn, that shit is Quack.
I don't like seeing Trovon Reed's name mixed in there with Lache Seastrunk and the others. I'm hoping there is a very good reason we dropped Seastunk but kept recruiting Trovon.I'm thinking (and hoping) that Trovon wasn't nearly as close with Lyles and Lyles didn't have any influence over him like he did with Lache.
Didn't see Trovon's name in that article.Anyone who read any premium articles when we were recruiting Seastrunk knows that Auburn one day just completely backed off Seastrunk with little or no explanation.It was all "We're not at liberty to say. It wasn't anything he did, or anything Auburn did. Unfortunately he got himself involved in some things that Auburn wants no part in" type of messages.
Yeah, it confused the shit out of me at the time, but in retrospect makes perfect sense.And this was all pre-Auburn is the dirtiest program in the history of all of college football bullshit.
That has to be a lie, we have been cheating since the early 80's according to all the bammers out there.
Lyles said the issue became problematic when Seastrunk’s mother said shewanted him to attend LSU.
“Lache came to me and said his mother was threatening him, saying shewouldn’t sign his letter of intent unless he went to the school she told him to go to,†Lyles said.
In three paragraphs, Seastrunk conveys several personal issues, mentionshis mother’s legal issues and states his mother shouldn’t be allowed to sign hisletter of intent because, in part, “she is only worried about herself and what shemight be able to get from me going to school or playing in the pros.â€
Chip Kelly may be a sitting Duck as Will Lyles blows the whistle on Oregon footballPublished: Sunday, July 03, 2011, 5:30 AM By Kevin Scarbinsky, Birmingham News Will Lyles (second from right) at the 2009 Florida-LSU game with (from left) Cassius Marsh (who later signed with UCLA), Trovon Reed (Auburn) and Lache Seastrunk (Oregon). Yahoo! Sports photo/Courtesy of Will LylesBIRMINGHAM, Alabama - Bruce Pearl, dead.Jim Tressel, dead.Chip Kelly?The head Duck may be a sitting duck, too.Professionally speaking.The Oregon football coach may be the latest victim of the same kind of self-inflicted career wound as the former Tennessee basketball coach and the former Ohio State football coach.Failure to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.That's the implication from the latest Yahoo! Sports investigative report detailing the relationship between Kelly, Oregon and Will Lyles, the alleged scouting service provider, academic adviser, letter-of-intent facilitator, street agent and third-party recruiter based in Houston.There's a big difference between Friday's story and the one Yahoo! Sports ran in March, which reported that Oregon had paid Lyles and his Complete Scouting Services $25,000 shortly after Texas high school running back Lache Seastrunk, whom Lyles had mentored, signed with the Ducks.This time, Lyles talked, at length and in detail, and he also provided all sorts of documents. Here's the money quote:"I look back at it now, and they (Oregon) paid for what they saw as my access and influence with recruits," Lyles said. "The service I provided went beyond what a scouting service should."Say hello to unlucky NCAA Bylaw 13.02.14. That's the one that defines a booster. If the NCAA defines Lyles that way, Oregon better duck.In the more than five hours of on-the-record interviews Lyles did with Yahoo! Sports, he didn't just throw Kelly and Oregon under the bus. He ran over them, backed over them and ran over them again.Isn't it ironic?Kevin Scarbinsky is a columnist for The Birmingham News. His column is published on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.Of the two head coaches in the last BCS Championship Game, it was Gene Chizik who had to answer questions in Arizona and beyond about an NCAA investigation. Of the two programs in that game, it was Auburn that supposedly was living under a cloud that would turn into a hailstorm at any moment.Six months later, after beating him on the field, Chizik continues to get the better of Kelly. The Auburn coach is about to embark on a media tour to promote his new book, and he hasn't been shy about defending Cam Newton and the way the program recruited him.Kelly, meanwhile, just took a direct hit on his personal integrity and professional reputation. Lyles said the coach himself approved the $25,000 payment from Oregon for Lyles' "services."Auburn didn't escape mention in the Yahoo! Sports story, but nothing there implicated the Tigers in any potential NCAA violations.They recruited Seastrunk for some time, but turned away from him long before signing day 2010. That could turn out to be the smartest recruiting decision Chizik and his staff have made.The story says that Lyles took current Auburn wide receiver Trovon Reed, among others, on recruiting trips to Oregon and LSU, but there's no indication that Lyles took Reed on a visit to Auburn.Taking a prospect on a recruiting trip alone isn't necessarily a violation. Oregon could get hammered by the NCAA because it paid Lyles, and if he's telling the truth, he provided a lot more than scouting reports in return.In May, Auburn and Alabama provided The Birmingham News with a list of scouting services they've purchased in the last three years. Alabama said it paid $218,628 to 14 different services from 2008-09 through March of this year. Auburn said it paid $99,022 to 23 different services for the same time period.Neither Alabama nor Auburn showed any payments to Lyles' Complete Scouting Services.Both schools did pay Elite Scouting Services, where Lyles worked before venturing out on his own with CSS. Auburn paid ESS $4,500 in 2008-09. Alabama paid ESS $6,500 in 2008-09 and $5,000 in 2009-10.But it's important to note that, when the NCAA asked Oregon in a March 4 letter for a "detailed accounting of the institution's financial records" related to Lyles and scouting services, it mentioned CSS by name, not ESS.This isn't the first time Kelly's good name and character have been questioned. John Canzano, sports columnist for The Oregonian, wrote Friday that he'd asked Kelly in March about "Willie Lyles." Kelly said "he didn't know who Lyles was."Later that same day, Yahoo! Sports reported that Oregon had paid $25,000 to Lyles' scouting service. Canzano contacted Kelly to clear up the coach's confusion. What did Kelly tell him?"Around here, we call him Will."Seriously?The way this is heading, Kelly is going to learn the same lesson as Pearl and Tressel. Honesty isn't the best policy. It's the only policy.
http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2011/07/oregon_coach_chip_kelly_may_be.htmlScarbinsky is about the only journalist we've got left in this state.
And it was only a few months ago you were sending hate e-mail to him about how dumb he was....
25 Replies
2839 Views