Alabama football program touched by fallout from Yahoo's Miami bombshellPublished: Tuesday, August 16, 2011, 11:23 PMKevin Scarbinsky, Birmingham News By Kevin Scarbinsky, Birmingham NewsBIRMINGHAM, Alabama - Back in late February, Charlie Strong delivered what seemed like bad news to Auburn at the time."Big news!" the Louisville head coach wrote on his Twitter account. "The Big Hurtt is staying with the Cardinals."U of L defensive line coach Clint Hurtt had interviewed at Auburn to replace Tracy Rocker, who'd left for the NFL's Tennessee Titans.Hurtt was a hot commodity. He'd just been named the top recruiter in the nation by ESPN.He made news again Tuesday in a different way, which had to make Gene Chizik breathe a sigh of relief that his new defensive line coach is Mike Pelton.Hurtt was one of seven former University of Miami coaches accused of breaking NCAA rules or knowing that rules were broken while they worked for the Hurricanes in a lengthy and dramatic expose by Yahoo! Sports. The story, centered on the accusations of now-jailed former Miami booster Nevin Shapiro, details "thousands of impermissible benefits provided to at least 72 athletes from 2002 through 2010."Given the depth and breadth of the allegations and the supporting evidence Yahoo! obtained during an 11-month probe, it may be the single most devastating investigative report in the history of college football.Read the story, and it's not a stretch to suggest that Miami could end up facing the ultimate NCAA sanction - the death penalty.Forgive Alabama fans, still smarting over their Bookgate probation and sanctions, for relishing the thought. The NCAA Infractions Committee chairman then was former Miami AD Paul Dee. He apparently spent too much time scolding other programs while neglecting his own.But Alabama can't take too much pleasure in Miami's pain because some of the widespread fallout from the Yahoo report reaches Tuscaloosa. The story accuses two of Nick Saban's off-season hires - offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland and director of football operations Joe Pannunzio - of breaking NCAA rules during their time with the Hurricanes.The story says that, according to Shapiro or other sources, both Stoutland and Pannunzio - along with Hurtt and two other Miami football staffers - "all delivered top-tier recruits to Shapiro's home or luxury suite so the booster could make recruiting pitches to them."It's an NCAA violation for boosters to be involved in recruiting. The story makes Shapiro, the rogue booster now serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for his role in a massive Ponzi scheme, sound like one of Miami's better recruiters.In an interesting twist, the story says the allegations against Pannunzio didn't come from Shapiro himself: "Multiple sources told Yahoo! Sports Shapiro also violated NCAA rules with football assistant Joe Pannunzio, although the booster refused to answer any questions about that relationship."As documentation of that relationship beyond the information provided by unnamed sources, Yahoo wrote that it "was able to identify 422 calls or texts between Shapiro and Pannunzio from 2006 to April, 2010."It should be noted that Pannunzio has an even older connection to this state. Long before he worked at Miami and Alabama, he followed Tommy Tuberville from Ole Miss to Auburn and spent one year with the Tigers before leaving to become the head coach at Murray State.Since Pannunzio and Stoutland now work at Alabama, the university felt compelled to release a statement Tuesday evening: "The University of Alabama is aware of the story but will have no further comment."Perhaps not now, but Alabama will be obligated to investigate, as will other programs such as Louisville football and Missouri basketball. Missouri hired head hoops coach Frank Haith away from Miami this past spring. Imagine Mizzou's reaction to the Yahoo story, which accuses Haith of breaking NCAA rules at Miami and shows photographs of him and his assistants hanging out with Shapiro.It's never a good thing when your current staffers are implicated in a scandal, even if the charges predate their time on your campus. It's too early to know the fate of Stoutland and Pannunzio at Alabama, but this is not the kind of distraction a program in search of a national title needs less than three weeks before opening day.For months, the Internet has hummed with speculation that Yahoo was working on a story that would rate a 10 on the Richter scale. This was it.Miami was ground zero. The aftershocks have reached all the way to Tuscaloosa and beyond.
uat is gulity by association......
Forgive Alabama fans, still smarting over their Bookgate probation and sanctions, for relishing the thought. The NCAA Infractions Committee chairman then was former Miami AD Paul Dee. He apparently spent too much time scolding other programs while neglecting his own.
Sometimes, I want to hook Cowturds nipples up to a set of jumper cables. I know, I know....most of us have that same fantasy. But, I digress. He can be an ear-a-tateeng little twit and he's rarely right about anything, but he did scoop this scoop.
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