| 05 July 2011
By my count, it’s been roughly five days, 120 hours and 19 hot dogs consumed since Yahoo Sports once again cracked open of college football’s elite programs like a soft boiled egg on Friday afternoon. That’s right, Dan Wetzel and Charles (can we call him “Chuck?") Robinson were at it again, providing more fireworks with the written word than any lame riverfront party over the weekend.
The school on the other end of this particular explosion was Oregon, and by know you know the details of their situation as well as I do. The Ducks have been locked in a weird web for months now, trading “he said, she said’s,” with a “scouting service,” director named Willie Lyles. With both sides sharing different takes on their relationship, we don’t know much, but what we do know is simple: Lyles’ scouting service provided Oregon little in actual materials (most everything the school presented to the public a few weeks ago was two years outdated), but did provide access to plenty of quality players. Included were All-American running back LaMichael James (who finished third in last year’s Heisman Trophy race), and super-recruit Lache Seastrunk, who just completed his freshman year in Eugene. Each is expected to be a major contributor on one of college football’s top teams in the fall.
But as for everything else that was shared by Yahoo, and what it means for everyone involved? Well that’s where it gets fishy.
Let’s start at the top, and start with what went down Friday.
After Oregon spent the last few weeks dragging Lyles’ name through the mud (thanks in large part to the documents he provided, which were almost exclusively of high school prospects in the class of 2009, trying to be passed off as members of the class of 2011), Lyles finally chirped up Friday, sharing his side of how things went down; and backing them up with a litany of e-mails, phone records and hand-written notes to support what he said.
Amongst the handful of nuggets Lyles dropped about his relationship with the school included:
- How he helped James transfer across the Texas state border to Arkansas to finish high school, after James had problems receiving a qualifying test score on a standardized math test. Arkansas didn’t require the math, clearing the path for James to graduate and enroll at Oregon.
- Lyles helped Seastrunk enroll in a class designed to help improve his grades and test scores. It’s important to note that Lyles claims not to have paid for the class; another man, whose son was set to enroll at Texas did. According to the Yahoo report, it’s not believed that the man paid for the class to try and influence Seastrunk’s college decision.
- With clarification from Oregon’s compliance department, Lyles help Seastrunk circumvent an NCAA rule that required his mother to sign his letter of intent, and allowed his grandmother to sign it instead. For reasons that aren’t made clear, Seastrunk’s mom preferred LSU to Oregon, and refused to sign the letter if he went against her wishes. It’s also important to note that the Yahoo article claims that because of legal troubles, Seastrunk spent a good portion of his childhood living with his grandparents (That seems to be kind of important with this particular allegation).
- Lyles accompanied a handful of recruits to Oregon on recruiting visits and even received a hand-written note from Kelly thanking him for attending.
- Kelly and Lyles were friendly beyond that, as Lyles even picked up and dropped off Kelly at the airport when the coach was recruiting in Houston.
A couple things here.
The first thing I want to make it clear is that I don’t blame Willie Lyles for coming forward. Not one bit. With his career as a scout all but over (whether it was a true career path or not, only he knows), and his name carrying less credibility than Anthony Weiner’s right now, Lyles had every right to tell his side of the story. Not to mention that everything he said was corroborated by Yahoo. Lyles career as a scout might be done, but that doesn’t mean all his dignity had to be as well.
And to a degree, Lyles did in fact save some of his dignity. At the very least, he was able to explain the bogus scouting reports he submitted to Oregon that so many in the media have called into question.
As Lyles told Yahoo, when he started his scouting service, Kelly agreed to sign up, and basically said, “Charge us whatever the rate for the best service in the country is,” without ever asking for stuff like, you know, video and scouting reports. Only when the Yahoo came snooping within the last few months did Kelly demand the bare bones of what would be expected from such a service, let alone one which charged $25,000. However, since Kelly had never asked for anything before, Lyles could only give him what he had, which were a bunch of scouting reports on the class of 2009, poorly packaged as scouting reports on the class of 2011. Which at least from Lyles perspective, explains some things. I’m not saying that makes Lyles totally, 100 percent credible. It does clear some stuff up however.
Also, another little twist that I found was this: Despite the national media calling for Kelly to step down, I heard interviews with both Wetzel and Robinson in which each said that they weren’t sure if there was enough for Kelly’s job to truly be in jeopardy.
Let me explain.
You see, despite the Ducks getting lumped in with Ohio State and North Carolina in college football’s “Summer of Shame,” this situation is almost entirely different from any case we’ve ever seen (At least given what we know so far). All of the concrete building blocks that have brought down other programs simply are here in this case. There has yet to be any blatant lying to the NCAA like Jim Tressel was guilty of at Ohio State, no cash exchanging hands like what happened at North Carolina with John Blake, Gary Wichard and half the Tar Heels defensive line, and no college athletes living the lives of professionals like O.J. Mayo and Reggie Bush at USC.
Quite the opposite actually.
If what Lyles has said is true (and remember, Yahoo verified just about everything they put in the article), Lyles really did believe he was doing nothing more than a scouting service. At no point did Lyles buy players, at no point did he sell players and at no point did he even influence them to go to Eugene. After all, there was a recruit named Travon Reed who visited Oregon with Lache Seastrunk in 2009, and he ended up at Auburn. If Lyles was steering recruits to Eugene, why didn’t Reed end up there? However, what Lyles is guilty of, is helping kids that were interested in Oregon get there (James and Seastrunk) in ways that they might not have been able to without him. Does that make him a bad guy? Probably not. But in the eyes of the NCAA, it could make him a representative of the school’s athletic interests, at which point both the man and Oregon would be in big trouble. Whether that happens or not, is of course tough to say. As Wetzel pointed out in the linked interview, this is the NCAA we’re dealing here.
So with all that said, does that mean Kelly’s career is on the line? Again, it’s hard to say.
Kelly wasn’t someone who was an egregious rule breaker like Jim Tressel, and the program was hardly out of control like North Carolina. Nope instead, Kelly dipped his toe in college athletics infamous “gray area,” where something juuuuust doesn’t seem right about this situation, even if actual, tangible NCAA violations might not have occurred. It does seem feasible that with some strong self-sanctions (recruiting restrictions, loss of scholarships etc.), Oregon may be able to spare Kelly.
Needless to say though, it'll be an uneasy few weeks in Oregon for Kelly and his staff. He definitely did something wrong, the question is, just how bad was it?
Still, after everyone spent the weekend calling the coach everything from ignorant to an idiot, I couldn’t help but think one thing that no one was discussing: Was the Oregon head coaching job too “big,” for him from the beginning?
Let’s think about it for a second.
By now we all know Kelly’s rags to riches story back story on his way to Oregon, as he bypassed all the rungs on the traditional college football coaching ladder to earn National Coach of the Year last season. Kelly wasn’t an assistant worked his way up the big program coaching tree like so many others, and didn’t cut his teeth as a head coach at a smaller FBS or even FCS school. Nope. Instead, Kelly was a no-name coordinator at New Hampshire five years ago, moved to Oregon for two years as an assistant and was named head coach within 24 months in Oregon. To put it in layman’s terms, he went from riding a bike with training wheels to getting the keys to his dad’s Ferrari in three college football seasons. And that, in some way, might help explain why Kelly has looked so stupid in dealing with Lyles.
To fully understand what I mean, let’s go back to the Yahoo report and look at what Kelly really did “wrong.”
He had Lyles shuttle him to and from the airport (Really Chip?).
He told Lyles to charge Oregon whatever he pleased for his scouting service, without asking for actual materials along to go along with the bill (REALLY, Chip?)
He hastily tried to retrace his steps and demand tape when the initial Yahoo report came out.
Again, Chip Kelly isn’t a man who was committing serious, program-breaking violations. Maybe his worst crime was going back to Lyles and demanding materials, instead of asking for something- anything- two years before. As always, the cover-up is worse than the crime. And to again use a real world analogy, Kelly didn’t commit murder, but instead got caught with cigarettes by his parents, and then claimed he was holding them for someone else. Kelly’s biggest crime- more than anything else- was being stupid and short-sighted.
Which brings me back to my point about the Oregon job. Was it simply too much, too soon for Chip Kelly? If you disagree that’s fine, but let me ask you this: Could you see Urban Meyer ever getting caught in the web of stupidity that Kelly is in right now? What about Bob Stoops? Hell, Will Muschamp has been a head coach for six months in Gainesville, and even I can’t see him being that dumb.
At the same time, let’s look at the resumes of those guys one more time. Meyer was a head coach at two I-A schools before taking the Florida job, and had been an assistant at both Ohio State and Notre Dame prior to that. Stoops spent a decade as an assistant at both Kansas State at Florida before heading to Norman. And Muschamp has worked at LSU, Auburn and Texas (not to mention the NFL).
Same with Nick Saban (a D-I or NFL assistant or head coach since the early 1970’s), Mack Brown (an eerily similar resume to Saban’s) and even Les Miles, who cut his teeth as an assistant with an elite Colorado program before becoming head coach at Oklahoma State and then LSU. Could you ever see any of those guys getting caught with their hand in the cookie jar like Kelly's right now?
Of course not. And you know why? Their experience simply wouldn’t allow them to. When you’re an assistant at Notre Dame, Florida and Texas and learning on the job from a veteran head coach, you know that there is no margin for error in situations like this. You understand that someone is always snooping, and that your rivals are itching to turn you in. That’s why those coaches would never pay $25,000 from a scouting service. There’s too much to lose, too many people to answer to. And they know that.
But Kelly? I’m not going to say ignorance is bliss, because really, no one should be as dumb as he’s been.
At the same time, up until five years ago, Kelly had never even been an assistant at a major program, let alone a head coach anywhere. His biggest job had been as offensive coordinator at New Hampshire, which is pretty damn near the bottom of the college football totem pole. All those tricks of the trade that Muschamp learned from Saban and Mack Brown, and Meyer learned at Bowling Green and Utah? Kelly never learned them. He never had to. Because again… he was coaching at New Hampshire!
Look, I love New Hampshire football (Go Wildcats!), but nobody is ever, under any circumstances, investigating that program. And ultimately, that was Kelly’s biggest problem. He may have been ahead of all his peers in the X’s and O’s. But in his ability to make decisions as the head of a program, especially at the Division I level? He was embryonic. Again, it was only five years ago that Kelly arrived on the I-A level.
In the end, I’ve got to be honest: I have no idea how this will all play out.
You could make a very strong case that Kelly should be fired or forced to resign, and I wouldn’t argue with you. You could also make a case that he should be allowed to keep his job too, and quite frankly, I hope you were right. As I mentioned on Twitter the other day, the sport of college football isn’t better without Chip Kelly, just like it isn’t better without Jim Tressel. But, if you do the crime, you’ve got to do the time. And I’m afraid that it might be time for Kelly to face the music.
And if Chip Kelly isn’t coaching at Oregon in the fall, or isn’t coaching there in 2012, it won't be because he’s a renegade or all around bad dude. It’ll be because he was simply an idiot. And maybe, just maybe, that idiocy was bread from simple lack of experience.
Not that it matters if the NCAA comes calling. But still. Sometimes, it’s stupidity which is the worst crime of all.
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