Fluker Receives Cash?

[noxin]

Do you really think Bama will be punished by the NCAA for any of this?

Like WE!!!, I'm just glad that I know for sure now.  That this sport is completely corrupt as the king has been breaking rules in order to win and the media has been helping covering it up.

Spencer Tillman on JOX this morning.  Says he wouldn't be surprised if UT and MSU got hit with penalties, but bama got off with basically nothing because of who they are.

[AUChizad]

By the way, more to WAR EAGLE!!!'s point.

We also know we're not crazy that the mediais all over Bama's nuts. They have removed all doubt.

"Unbiased" third party Tony Kurre, who never shut up about what filthy cheaters Auburn was for certainly paying Cam? This morning was on the "these poor kids need the money" talking point. Just like everyone else.

Where were all the "The rules are stupid anyway" stories two fucking years ago? How has the culture of college football changed that much? As late as a couple months ago we had to endure ESPN giving 24 hour coverage of Selena Roberts' Roopstigo.blogspot.com article while simultaneously pushing a completely debunked piece about how our team was basically the Columbian Cartel. Of course, the second half of the documentary was a piece about how Bama saved the lives of poor souls who would otherwise be living off the streets.

For over 24 hours during all this scandal, this is the ESPN CFB front page right now.

http://sports-ak.espn.go.com/college-football/


Nothing on ESPN's TV, internet, or any other service until about 4 hours after the story broke. Still haven't seen it mentioned on TV yet, and I watched longer than I have watched any non-game ESPN broadcast in years.

It's night and day. All doubt has been removed. We're not crazy. They're out to get us.

[Townhallsavoy]

Do you think saban believes his routine #1 recruiting classes are solely the result of him being the greatest recruiter of all time?

I'll stick up for him on this one.  Yes, I believe Saban believes his routine and process and jibber jabber is the real reason why he lands #1 recruiting classes. 

The guy is the most arrogant coach I've ever heard of.  He thinks his shit doesn't stink.  He as evidenced yesterday believes he can walk into a press conference where reporters are waiting to ask questions about his program and instruct them on what questions are allowed and what questions are not allowed.   

I don't believe head coaches have the ability to control rogue boosters, agents, and their players from breaking NCAA rules and cheating to win.  That's why universities have a compliance department.  But you know who mostly works in these compliance departments?  Most of the employees are fans of that school.  And as we've seen repeatedly with Alabama fans, they'll do anything, look past anything, destroy anything to win. 

[AUChizad]

LOL
http://capstonereport.com/2013/09/11/dj-fluker-story-shows-times-tough-alabama/22024/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CapstoneReport+%28Capstone+Report%29

T imes must be tough in Tuscaloosa. There is plenty of bling in the trophy case, but apparently, not much is making its way to the players if we can judge based on the latest allegations involving DJ Fluker receiving illegal benefits from an agent.

In the past, the allegations of illegal benefits involving Alabama football players were much more interesting and had a higher price tag. Remember the days of Dodge Chargers? Now all players get are lame furniture from Sticks N Stuff and $500 via Western Union.

Are we paying Nick Saban too much? Have we increased his suit allowance and that puts a damper on what we can spend on players?

In all seriousness, the story is bad for the University of Alabama, the SEC, college football and Yahoo.

It is bad for Alabama because the refrain from lame Auburn fans (who deliriously believe Auburn didn’t buy Cam Newton when his father admitted to shopping his services to another SEC school) and other jealous haters around the nation will be that Alabama cheated. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that Alabama cheated. There was no institutional involvement. There is no evidence of a lack of institutional control or even a failure to monitor.

Of course, evidence could arise that changes that. However, as we’ve learned since the Dodge Charger and Gadsden days, those possibilities are rare—about as rare as an Auburn SEC win in 2012.

This story is bad for the SEC because it tarnishes the conference’s stirling record of compliance. No conference since the SWC could boast such a fine record of compliance with NCAA rules. This story is bad for college football because the greatest thing to happen to modern football is the possibility of a dynasty. It inspires other teams to become more competitive and motivates interest, which means it is good for ratings and the bottomline.

The Yahoo story itself is a nice job of investigative reporting. The information presented is explained, detailed and documented very nicely. It gives readers a chance to contemplate the information.

However, Pat Forde’s immature and petulant column posted late last night overshadowed that strong Yahoo editorial work. Forde took shots at Saban over his press conference demeanor and then blasted ESPN.

Forde’s attack on Saban is pathetic because Forde tried to make Saban’s behavior into something special.

Yet, this is how Saban normally responds when he doesn’t get his way in the press room. Ask Saban a dumb question, or ask a question more than once, and you get to see the side of Saban that obviously, “doesn’t have time for this stuff.”™

What was most interesting to me was this line regarding ESPN, “On the sideline, ESPN reporter Shannon Spake was doing a live stand-up via satellite – part of a week of buddy-buddy ESPN insider coverage of one of its most powerful and lucrative broadcast partners.”

Buddy-Buddy ESPN insider coverage? Jealous much Forde?

Perhaps you benefited from the Worldwide Leader’s editorial supervision.

There is a clear editorial rivalry developing between some of these want-to-be organizations and the sporting world’s most dominant media player. Ordinarily, that type of rivalry is a good thing and helps generate substantially useful investigative reporting like the main Yahoo story. Yet, at times, it reveals the pettier nature of people like Forde.

[jmar]

MSU is already on probation.

[JR4AU]

WE pretty well said it all.  And, I don't think anything other than vindication and peace of mind will come from this, but that's good enough. 

[AUChizad]

Barner Scarbinsky, the lone voice of reason:

http://www.al.com/alabamafootball/index.ssf/2013/09/could_dj_fluker_be_alabamas_ve.html

Could D.J. Fluker be Alabama's version of Reggie Bush? (Kevin Scarbinsky)

Kevin Scarbinsky

on September 12, 2013 at 7:01 AM

One’s a massive offensive tackle. The other’s a shifty running back. At first glance, D.J. Fluker and Reggie Bush have little in common. Or they had until Yahoo! Sports released its latest expose on the flourishing underground economy of major college football.

That story raises the disturbing possibility that Fluker could be to Alabama what Bush was to USC.

A player who helped win a national title and then helped lose it because he couldn’t wait until he left school to get paid.

According to the Yahoo! Sports story released Wednesday, former Alabama football player Luther Davis, acting as a middleman for agents and advisers in search of clients, provided extra benefits to five SEC football players.

One of them: Fluker, who finished his college career in January’s BCS Championship Game victory over Notre Dame and in April became a first-round NFL draft pick. The other players were from Mississippi State and Tennessee.

The story says that financial and text message records Yahoo! Sports obtained that belong to Davis “show agents and financial advisers moved at least $45,550 to Davis between September 2011 and December 2012” and that Davis moved “at least $12,700 in cash, airfare, living expenses or other receipts ... to the five players.”

It’s impossible to read the allegations and not flash back to April, when the following message appeared on Fluker's Twitter account: “Yea I took $ n college so wat. I did wat I had to do. Agents was tryin to pimp me so I pimped them. Cast da 1st stone.”

The curious explanation at the time from Fluker’s agent was that someone had hacked his account. The Yahoo! Sports story suggests the tweet may have been an admission of guilt.

As damning as the documents implicating Fluker appear to be, it’s a long way from a well-documented piece of investigative journalism to an NCAA investigation, hearing and ruling, let alone a BCS decision to strip a school of a crystal football.

It happened to USC because the NCAA believed Bush and his family received plenty of extra benefits during his college days and an assistant coach knew about some of the gifts from sports marketing agents who wanted to sign Bush as a client.

Even if Fluker did accept extra benefits before or during the 2012 season and there are documents to prove it, neither he nor Davis can be forced to talk to the NCAA. Even if the documents are enough to satisfy the NCAA that violations occurred, was there any reason for Alabama to know it or suspect it?

There’s one more parallel between the Fluker story and the Bush story. Yahoo! Sports also broke the story about the relationship between Bush and the marketing agents that led to the NCAA probe and the loss of the 2004 BCS title and Bush’s Heisman Trophy.

It may be to Alabama’s advantage that the NCAA enforcement operation is a shell of its former self, but the NCAA may find itself under enormous pressure to take a hard look at the dominant program of the last five years.

There’s a perception among rival fans that Alabama’s been under some sort of protective umbrella because of the relationship between Nick Saban and NCAA President Mark Emmert, who hired Saban at LSU. That perception has been fueled by the seeming lack of NCAA interest in reports of unusually friendly relationships between Alabama football players and in-state business owners such as Tom Albetar of T-Town Menswear in Tuscaloosa and Mitch Ross and Christopher Key of S.W.A.T.S. in Fultondale.

Will Alabama’s prominence and Yahoo! Sports’ reputation compel the NCAA to begin a full-scale investigation? The program's last NCAA probation ended in June of 2012, but Alabama is still in the five-year repeat violator window. Will that further whet the NCAA's appetite?

Does it raise more red flags that Davis, the alleged middleman, is a former Alabama player and sports agent John Phillips is an Alabama grad? According to the story, Phillips was providing money to Davis during a time period in which Davis was providing benefits to Fluker.

Davis and the agents he allegedly represented also could find themselves on the radar of the Alabama Attorney General for possible violations of the state’s Uniform Athlete Agents Act if they provided extra benefits to Fluker while he was still playing college football.

In another potential violation, Davis is not on the Alabama Secretary of State’s Comprehensive Listing of Registered Agents.

State Rep. Jack Williams is the co-chair of the Alabama Athlete Agents Commission. He said Wednesday night that the commission is scheduled to meet Sept. 25th and could forward information from the Fluker story to the attorney general’s office for potential investigation and prosecution.

It’s far too early to tell if this story will have legs as far as the NCAA or the state of Alabama are concerned, but Saban certainly understands what’s at stake here. Witness his angry response to repeated questions about the Fluker story after Wednesday’s practice and his abrupt exit from the podium.

Three days before Alabama’s rematch with Johnny Manziel and Texas A&M, the suggestion that one of his former star players may have jeopardized his amateur status and the team’s 2012 national title has to sting. The suggestion that another former player may have played the role of pimp, to use Saban's biting description of sketchy agents and their runners, has to cut even deeper.

It may never amount to anything more than temporary bad publicity, but at the moment, it has to qualify as five-alarm clutter.

[Townhallsavoy]

Lawls...totally forgot about the Hot Wheelz bullshit:

[AUChizad]

Oh...Oh God...Oh right there...harder...harder!

So...back to this.

Where did it come from? Haven't seen anything about this anywhere else. This should be a bigger deal, in light of what we know now.

[Townhallsavoy]

Where did it come from? Haven't seen anything about this anywhere else. This should be a bigger deal, in light of what we know now.

I believe it was an ITAT guy a while back, but someone posted it on another football site and I stole it.

It's another shady Bama story with nothing really there to prove that it's a violation.  Al-Betar is supposed to be disassociated from all things Bama as of 2011 yet he's still sending care packages to Jesse Williams' family in Australia.  They must have become buddies when Williams was getting a pretzel at the mall.  Oh, and he probably borrowed that BCSCG ring from him too.

But since Williams is gone, there's nothing actually illegal here.  We just know it probably was illegal and Al-Betar probably was a handler for Jesse Williams, but there's nothing anyone can do about it.

Flukergate changed everything about that word "probably" though. 

[dallaswareagle]

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/ncaaf--nick-saban-s-curt-response-to-allegations-against-alabama-shows-a-coach--program-with-much-to-lose-025249105.html

Yahoo is twisting the knife...

So, yeah, this is serious. Especially for a fan base that is as intense (and unbalanced) as any in America.

Maybe others will start seeing this more. 

[Godfather]

Barner Scarbinsky, the lone voice of reason:

http://www.al.com/alabamafootball/index.ssf/2013/09/could_dj_fluker_be_alabamas_ve.html

[dallaswareagle]

So, how many of you assholes woke up with a little extra pep in your step this morning?  Told your wife her hair looks great?  Gave that homeless guy on the corner a $20 bill on your way in to work?  


 

I would think that yawl would lay low and quit taking money for a while?

[Townhallsavoy]

I would think that yawl would lay low and quit taking money for a while?

[The Six]

I can see this now. Saban leaves for Texas. Alabama (along with MSU and Tennessee) get made an example of by the NCAA. The SECs run ends in scandal. ESPN jizzes itself on the coverage of the death of the SEC.

Meanwhile the Leprechaun of Anger skates free...again

[jmar]

Lawls...totally forgot about the Hot Wheelz bullshit:

http://www.bloguin.com/crystalballrun/2013-articles/june/mississippi-state-put-on-probation-has-scholarships-reduced-thanks-to-good-old-cash-and-cars-recruitment.html

[dallaswareagle]

I can see this now. Saban leaves for Texas. Alabama (along with MSU and Tennessee) get made an example of by the NCAA.

Belittle skates free...again

So "if" and that's a BIG IF ($ to OS) they have to vacate titles, do the mini-statues come down?

[noxin]

So "if" and that's a BIG IF ($ to OS) they have to vacate titles, do the mini-statues come down?

They'll just claim the AP title

[bottomfeeder]

[The Six]

They'll just claim the AP title

Yep.