What did we actually do to get probation?

[blacklistedbully]

Have read a few sources, but am still left shaking my head at hos harsh our penalties were for what I believe we did. Am I missing something?<div>
</div><div>Seems to me we paid for a couple of motel rooms for families of recruits, had a student-athlete buy a recruit a pair of sneakers with his own money, and may have paid for a rental car to get a recruit & his family home. Believe I heard the total $ spent over a multiple year period with multiple recruits was around $300 total. Nobody signs an LOI for that.</div><div>
</div><div>Have also read that the NCAA decided to consider a former MSU player, who subsequently became a HS coach, a booster, thus making our contact with him in the recruitment of one of his players a major violation.</div><div>
</div><div>Is this about right or is there more to the story? If that's it, I'm surprised we got as hammered as we did. Can anybody enlighten me?</div>

 

[boomboommsu]

We rose above our place. Many think we just need the right coach, or the right recruits, or whatever. hogwash. the SEC will NEVER let us rise to that level. we are here to serve the elites only. </p>

 

[blacklistedbully]

I get that we often get screwed by the refs & front office in favor of contending powerhouses on a game-to-game basis. But why would the SEC not want to see a successful MSU? An improved MSU would be a boon to the SEC unless you really believe they're counting on us to pad other team's records with a W most years. I think that goes a little too far.

 

[boomboommsu]

Why would Slive not want MSU to go the NCAA Bball tournament in 2010? I don't know, but I know he pimped Florida and ignored us. Florida got the bid. And that's just one example. The facts trump your hypothetical.

But the real answer to your question is $$$$. MState success at the expense of Bama, Auburn, or Florida, etc, is a direct loss of money for the league as a whole, via lower TV ratings.</p>

 

[Johnson85]

The reason we got hammered is that the NCAA "knew" we were cheating and the punishment was based on what they "knew" we were doing. Not sure why they made an example out of MSU. Either they thought we were escalating it beyond everybody else, thought it was worse for a school like MSU as opposed to a powerhouse to cheat, or just thought Jackie should have been sent to coaching purgatory and wanted to set an example for other schools thinking about hiring coaches with baggage. No clue which one it was, but I'm guessing mostly the third reason with maybe a little bit of the first two contributing.

 

[maroonmania]

the biggest ones I remember was providing some temporary housing in Starkville for a couple of JUCO guys (Tommy Kelly?) that were hiding out from UM coaches and I think maybe paying a few hundred bucks for a summer class for a guy that ended up at USM. There was some other ticky-tack junk thrown in as well like the Kevin Fant tires that were held with a credit card and seems like something for Doug Buckles (meal or shoes or something) but I can't remember. Anyway that's exactly what I thought of when people on here were talking about the small amount of money it really took to buy some of these recruits whose families may be quite destitute. Our last multi-year probation was over a VERY petty amounts of money. So you are either clean or you're not and the NCAA either wants to get you or they don't (and the NCAA usually knows that BEFORE they start investigating). The probation we got at the end of Sherrill's tenure I figure if you added the monetary value up of all of it it was less than $2500.

 

[jeremyrbrown]

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=1681690

An investigation that took 2.5 years and all they came up with was some hearsay from relatives of players that didn't even come to State. It seemed like a raw deal then. Looks even worse now compared to some of the crap that goes on unchecked at other places.

 

[NewTweederEndzoneDance]

It really had more to do with the NCAA versus Jackie than it did with MSU. Jackie did some really great things at MSU, but he came in with a long history of run-ins with the NCAA. They spent all that time looking for ways to nail him, and in the end they really didn't come up with proof of most of the stuff they "knew" he was doing.

The final proof didn't look much at all like what was really going on. Those boys back then seemed to really know how to cover their tracks, and when it all wrapped up it looked a lot like we were getting hammered for relatively minor infractions. Nonetheless, I'll always be of the opinion that the harshness was aimed almost exclusively at Jackie due to his history with the NCAA.

 

[MedDawg]

...and the total dollar amount came out to less than $1,500. $800 of that was for two summer school classes. We got hit for that despite producing witnesses who said the recruit told them he paid for the classes with his own money from a summer job. Buckles was given $20 by an MSU school recruiter (Roadrunner?) who was a friend of Buckles from high school--hence, "Twenty Buckles". There were some improper travel reimbursements--$127 to one recruit's family, etc.

$1,500. After 3 years of investigation, that is all they could come up with. Just the rims on Goldie's SUV were worth more than that. 3 years of XenaReb's birth control pills cost more than that.

 

[Rezpup]

that he was always beating the schools that weren't supposed to be beaten and doing so with that schools biggest rival. He dominated Jopa with Pitt. He was beating Texas with less politically less powerful A&M (as well as stealing all the press). At State he was beating Ole Miss on the field and in recruiting and that wasn't gonna happen for long before the politically powerful in this state were going to try to bring it to an end.
If you recall, during the middle of all this, it was was reported in the Clarion/Ledger that car payments for a Denali that were being driven by an Ole Miss running back (nicknamed "goldie") were being mailed to the residence of an Ole Miss booster in Senatobia, MS. His address and name were even included in the article. The total payments to pay off the car note were around $14,000.00. After the article ran the story was buried and nothing else was ever heard about it again in the press.
In order for State to have equaled this transgression they would have had to have paid for 28 summer school classes for that recruit that we paid $800.00 for those two classes.

 

[coorslightdawg]

Things are not always as they seem. It can be right in front of you yet you can not see it because it's so simple.Sometimes the tounge is quicker than the mind.