After years and years of waiting, a self-imposed post-season ban, and dismissing Coach Sean Miller, the IARP finally handed down it's ruling on Arizona. The penalties? Asst. Coach Book Richardson got a 10-year show cause, Assistant Coach Mark Phelps, a 2-year show cause, the program was fined $5,000, lost one scholarship for 2023-24, and there's an additional 7-week dead period for Arizona where we can't recruit. That's it. Sean Miller received no additional punishment (he was already suspended for 2 games and lost his job), and the program received no additional post-season ban. My guess is the IARP figured the program and Miller already suffered enough, and no additional punishments were necessary. Here's Goodman's tweet on the story.
Why? As a reminder, the 4 allegations against Arizona Basketball from the NCAA included Book taking money as a bribe, Asst. Coach Phelps paying for a plane ticket for a member of Keanu Pinder's family to fly from Australia to see him play, and 2 instances of Phelps helping players get eligible. One, Shareef O'Neal never enrolled in Arizona, but instead, went to UCLA and was eligible, but didn't play due to health reasons. Eventually transferred and did play at LSU. The last allegation was helping Rawle Alkins get eligibility. But other than the allegation, the NCAA said nothing about this. In the end, the IARP listed the self-punishments, including the 1-year post-season ban as part of the overall punishments. Again, the program suffered enough already, and the IARP figured no real reason to pile on at this point.
The question is why nothing happened with Duke and the Zion house issue, UNC and the greatest academic sandal of our time etc.
The problem with Hall's Florida minor infractions is Florida was already under probation because of Charlie Pell. Had the program not been in trouble prior to Hall's assistant allegedly giving a few bucks to Jarvis Williams (I think he was the player, and please correct if I'm wrong), Florida would have gotten off a lot lighter under Hall. Arizona Basketball last had infractions in 2007/08, and the 5-year probation period had worn off by 2017. The 07/08 infractions were minor, as some members of the Lute Olson Basketball camp had received free food, and some of these kids were later recruited by the school. Still, had the Book incident happened within 5 years of the Camp incident, penalties might have been much more harsh. As it was, we ended up losing a coach, 2 assistants, several recruits, and a year of post-season basketball where we were on the NCAA Bubble, and a lock for the NIT had we been eligible.
From my perspective, if a real enforcement unit from the NCAA would have dug in on Arizona, All the great centers you all have gotten, which every team in the USA wanted, agents steered the players to Arizona from wanting them in their folds when they went pro. no telling how much money changed hands, agents to athlete and family and tips being passed to the agents. There was a reason to go there, same as Duke, UNC and Kansas. Your punishment didn’t fit the bill in my views and the NCAA is worthless now that they let the schools dole out enforcement. ex; Let all prisoners have a say on their punishment for crimes they committed and time spent in Jail. LOL
The NCAA has no real enforcement unit. They have no subpoena power, and therefore, can only dig if the school allows. Who does have subpoena and real digging power? The FBI. And they did dig into Arizona Basketball because Book Richardson bit when he was offered a bribe to steer players already enrolled in school to sign with a specific agent, and use a specific money management firm. In the end, Book took about $60k in illegal bribes, and ultimately plead guilty, and served a six months sentence plus 2 years probation (which he is still serving). The FBI also dug into the allegation that Miller approved $100k payment to entice DeAndre Ayton to go to Arizona. The FBI did uncover that Kansas paid a friend of the Ayton's $15k, but never any payments between anyone involved with Arizona Basketball and anyone involved with the Ayton family. So either Miller is a mastermind criminal and found out a way to make illegal payments to prospective college players that is completely untraceable by the FBI? Or, the payments never happened. In the end, the NCAA was allowed to see all the FBI evidence in the Book case. The NOA from the NCAA against Arizona never mentioned Ayton, or any player payments whatsoever other than money paid for a plane ticket for a player's family member (Pinder) to fly from Australia to Tucson. Which was self reported by the school before the NCAA found out, Pinder was forced to pay back the money, and was suspended three games, all the by school. Arizona may have been guilty of more. But being guilty and having evidence of said guilt are two different things. And what the NCAA had evidence for, the punishment fit the crime. And additional evidence like Arizona getting top centers by paying for them? It may not even exist, because it may not ever happened. Unless either Miller is a mastermind criminal, or the FBI is completely inept at finding evidence.
You know that agents are directing these players, or you choose to follow great recruiting and think we are a blue blood because of Great coaches.
Is Florida clean? Was it clean under Billy? Lute and Billy used to recruit a lot of the same players, and respected each other. So did Miller and Billy, who were friends since Billy hosted Miller at Providence on Miller's visit. Arizona and Florida played 4 great games over the years, two Billy vs. Lute, and two Billy vs. Miller. I believe we split 2-2. And it wasn't just Arizona that Donovan and Florida recruited against. Others included Kansas, which has also been named in the same scandal.
General consensus around here is that Billy left because he didn't like the cesspool that recruiting had become...and probably knew he could no longer compete and run a clean program. No athletic department was under higher (both internal AND external) scrutiny than UF during Billy's tenure here. I do believe we ran a clean program.
