Wednesday, February 25, 2009

A phone call?

Thanks to the tip from Jared from Midwest Sports Fans, and also discussed on Inside the Hall, the Indianapolis Star is reporting that IU self-reported an impermissible phone call. Here's the NCAA self-report form. I tend to agree with ITH, that this isn't a big deal, but the very nature of the violation causes some heartburn. The report provides a bit more detail than the Star article. The report indicates that on October 25, Roshown McLeod made what was the third call of the week to Bawa Muniru. Tom Crean had made a call on that Sunday, and again on Wednedsay. Because of IU's practice schedule, he thought the Sunday call had been made the previous day. IU found the violation on November 21, reported it on December 10, and imposed a sanction of no calls for a week in December. It sounds as if the staff has a good system for preventing these sorts of issues--the head coach and the responsible assistant each make no more than one call a week to a recruit--but it failed in this instance because of a misrecollection by Crean as to the date of the first call. McLeod made what he thought was his one call of the week, but he didn't have it. Expect howling from the usual quarters, but I don 't think this is a major concern, just a major annoyance.

Also, if self-reports of these sorts of violations are front page news, perhaps the Star should recall that the open records statute applies to all publicly supported institutions, and most states have similar laws. The Star says that these things are commonplace, and IU's critics will try to turn this into a big deal. Perhaps the Star should find out what Purdue, Ball State, Indiana State, IUPUI and others are reporting on a regular basis, if anything, or even other Big Ten schools in neighboring states.

3 comments:

J Money said...

Only thing I would say is that IU and its fans have lost the right to be cavalier about this kind of stuff. Right or wrong, people are hypersensitive to it now. See your point, though...

John M said...

I don't think I'm being cavalier about it. I sure as hell didn't want to have to write a post about this. But I also don't think that IU is obligated to issue a press release every time it files this sort of report. If these things are a major issue, then I think the Star should be keeping up with all athletic departments in its jurisdiction, and might want to write a story about the phone monitoring setups of local and other Big Ten schools. I have no idea what Purdue or Butler or Ohio State do in comparison to what IU does in terms of monitoring phone records, conducting audits, and the like. But it seems worth knowing.

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