Tag Archives: NCAA violations

Duck drug testing begins, without Senate approval

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9/6/2012: In trying to defend random drug testing UO spokesperson Phil Weiler comes close to slandering UO’s acrobatics and tumbling team, formerly known as Competitive Cheer. Diane Dietz of the RG has the story here:

In acrobatics, Weiler said, “there are bodies that are literally flying through the air. The chance of injury if an athlete wasn’t caught properly or supported properly is pretty high. You want to make sure people are not under the influence.”

And there was some probable cause or reasonable suspicion about the team that led him to make this statement about UO students to a reporter? Or is it just public relations bullshit to take the heat off the football team’s Purple Kush problem?

President Gottfredson went ahead with this drug testing policy change without going through the Senate Executive Committee as Lariviere’s agreements with the faculty require. Perhaps Randy Geller convinced him that Duck athletics has nothing to do with UO academics, and therefore the policy didn’t need Senate review? It looks like Randy Geller needs to know more, and learn about saliva drug tests and the legality of conducting said tests.

Dear Rob and Brian:

I received your email of July 24, 2012, requesting a delay in the public hearing scheduled for August 23rd, 2012. The hearing will be rescheduled for September 13, 2012. Written comments will be accepted until noon on September 14, 2012. We will similarly postpone the date the rule will be filed with the Secretary of State and become final. The rule will be filed on September 21, 2012.

Your allegations about the University’s rulemaking processes are offensive and false , as are the comments made publicly by members of the Intercollegiate Athletics Committee. I ask that you apologize in writing to President Berdahl, Rob Mullens, and me. I also ask that you censure the members of the IAC who have published offensive and defamatory comments.

Randolph Geller

General Counsel
University of Oregon

The mild-mannered email from the UO Senate President and the Intercollegiate Athletics Committee Chair that set off Geller is here. He has a history of using this sort of intimidation. President Gottfredson made him apologize to the former AG for similar language, but apparently it’s OK to threaten the faculty – particularly when it works.

Geller opens Glazier’s kimono on UO NCAA violations

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8/31/2012. KATU News requested the documents in May, Dan Tilkin and John Tierney have the story. Jake Zivin of KEZI also gives a peek. It’s another of UO General Counsel Randy Geller’s hack jobs, not much meat:

The full dump is here. I’d be very surprised if all Randy’s redactions are legal under Oregon’s public records law. Yes, there’s an attorney-client exemption, but it’s very specific. Not that I know anything about the Oregon DOJ’s Public Records manual.

Geller’s refusal to consider fee-waivers for public records requests on UO’s contracts with law firms helping UO with its NCAA compliance issues was the subject of a post last week. UO President Gottfredson told him to stop that, fix the policy, and give me the contracts. A week later, still no documents from Geller. The Oregon DOJ policy is to fill the request in a week, something simple like this typically takes a few days. So a few nights back I petitioned Lane County DA Alex Gardner’s office. Believe me, they’ve got better things to do with their time than babysit Randy and his crew. For that matter Alex Gardner’s Deputy was not too happy with me for pushing it either.

But that’s what it takes to get Geller to obey the public records law. It would have taken 3 minutes to just email these contracts when I made the request – and after 2 weeks, 2 days, and who knows how much wasted staff time here they are.

They don’t even describe the scope of the work, or limit the amount of billing. Did Geller follow OUS procurement OAR’s when making these deals with Glazier and BSK? How much is the academic side on the hook for this time? Who knows. Reporters are still working on getting the much more revealing Glazier invoices:

Why the faculty needs oversight of athletics:

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PSU receives accreditation warning over the fallout from the Sandusky/Paterno football scandal:

“Middle States [Commission on Higher Education] is focusing on governance, integrity and financial issues related to information in the Freeh Report and other items related to our current situation, …” 

UNC wanted *athletes* to pay for the NCAA infractions

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7/11/2012: North Carolina newspapers have obtained some heavily redacted documents from the recent NCAA Infractions Committee investigation of its various football misdeeds, along with the BSK law firm’s $60,000 in invoices. (Oregon reporters haven’t obtained any of these for the UO case since Bob Berdahl rescinded Lariviere’s public records policies.) You can read the official NCAA report here – and yes, UO’s own NCAA Faculty Athletics Representative Jim O’Fallon is one of the officious signatories. We pay him to do the NCAA cartel’s dirty work.

One amazing part of the new documents is the information that, in an effort to protect the football program and have NCAA let the players keep playing for free, the university proposed making the “student athletes” pay for the violations! (p93) It’s not enough that the cartel keeps the athlete’s pay at zero – now they have to pay NCAA penalties too?

The NCAA report does not say whether or not the NCAA took UNC up on their generous offer. It all makes me wonder what is going on with the Willie Lyles NCAA violation, and what sort of self imposed penalties UO is proposing – and who is going to end up paying for them.

Meanwhile, one of the UNC players is suing the NCAA for declaring him ineligible – this could get interesting.

New UO job for NCAA cleanup specialist Mike Glazier

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4/10/2012: Randy Geller spent almost 4 weeks going through these with his whiteout bottle, but here they are. Looks like UO hired Mike Glazier last month for a second project, reviewing NCAA compliance. $9,245 in billing on that, plus $11,194.79 for the Willie Lyles football recruiting cleanup.

No worries, UO athletics is self supporting, and can surely cover this without taking any student tuition money. Or at least that’s what UO’s VPFA Jamie Moffitt has been claiming. All 10 pages here.

Worst of all are university presidents

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NYT financial columnist Joe Nocera:

… The N.C.A.A. likes to say it exists to “protect student-athletes,” but it’s a laughable claim. The N.C.A.A. exists to rationalize the tawdry fact that the labor force of a $6 billion business — the estimated revenue of college football and men’s basketball — receives no compensation. (That’s what amateurism in big-time college sports really is: unpaid labor.) Coaches, athletic directors, conference presidents, the N.C.A.A. itself — they all take advantage of the teenagers who are making them rich, knowing their young charges have no recourse.

Worst of all are university presidents. So quick to espouse the rights of the student body — rights of privacy, of free association, and of due process should they get in trouble — they allow the N.C.A.A. to strip college athletes of every one of these rights. They look the other way as athletes receive a substandard education, or no education at all. An athlete can be defamed by the N.C.A.A., even have his career destroyed for no good reason, and the school, fearing retaliation, will never step forward to defend him publicly. It is shameful. …

3/5/2012.

NCAA cartel’s investigation procedures

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3/5/2012: Jeffrey Martin of the Oregonian explains where Oregon is at in the NCAA infractions process. I love the way the NCAA infractions people dress up their efforts to preserve their hiring cartel and keep all the profits for the coaches and NCAA insiders with a bunch of legal terminology. For the real explanation on why the NCAA cares about Willie Lyles watch this South Park episode. If the NCAA lets players have agents, the agents will negotiate for better deals for the players. And we certainly can’t allow that!

UO improves transparency 100%

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3/1/2012: Compare the December and January invoices from Mike Glazier, the NCAA insider lawyer that UO is paying to negotiate the NCAA football infractions settlement. Looks much more transparent when you do the redactions in white, instead of the traditional CIA black.

But the bottom line is the same: the UO administration is charging the academic side half of Chip Kelly and Rob Mullens’s legal fees, but they won’t tell us what is going on or how much we are going to pay to settle their mess. (Whole January invoice here. Seems BSK had screwed up the billing for the last 3 months, and had to refund UO $1,260.)

At this point even the Vatican is more transparent than Randy Geller – if a little slower. The Holy See has now released Martin Luther’s excommunication. With no redactions.

December 2011: January 2012:

Say it aint so, Chip!

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2/24/2012: From Rob Moseley in the RG:

An NCAA investigation suggests that the Oregon football team did not conform to NCAA regulations relating to recruiting over the last four years, according to documents released Friday by the university. A draft statement of “proposed findings of violations” submitted by the NCAA to the athletic department notes that the Ducks used three scouting services in ways that did not conform with NCAA rules, and to exceeding the permissible number of coaches involved in recruiting at any one time. Further, and potentially most serious, the NCAA and Oregon “agreed that from 2008 through 2011, the scope and nature of the violations … demonstrate that the athletics department failed to adequately monitor the football program’s use of recruiting or scouting services.”

Getting close to that dreaded “loss of institutional control”. This is going to cost another big bundle of UO student tuition money. Rob Mullens’s letter to UO here, NCAA proposed findings of violations here. Ken Goe story from the Oregonian here. Chip Kelly’s contract, here, specifically allows UO to dock his pay for the cost of this crap.

So, Rob Mullens could indeed fine Kelly for NCAA violations, etc. A day’s pay would be about $20,000, but there’s no upper limit and Kelly would not seem to have much recourse. But I’m guessing it’s more likely the UO administration will stick the academic side with the consequences. They’ve already got us paying for the Jock Box, parking, overhead, and of course for 50% of Glazier’s bill for handling the NCAA: contract here, Here’s one of the docs, approved by Jamie Moffitt:

Randy Geller and former Public Records Officer Liz Denecke spent almost 3 months stalling the release of the records that showed that the academic side was stuck with half the cost. We pay, but when we ask what’s going on, we get this:

December’s entire bill is $15,441.41. UO is still sitting on the January bill.

More NCAA transparency from Randy Geller

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December’s entire bill is $15,441.41. I’m no art history professor, but I think this page has the most aesthetically appealing redactions, though page 2 has a certain stark symmetry.

Per the agreement between UO’s general counsel Randy Geller and CFO Jamie Moffitt, the academic side is on the hook for half the total for Mike Glazier’s cleanup of the Willie Lyles scandal – now $100,527.44. You’d think this would mean we’d be allowed to read at least half the words in his invoice.

When Chip Kelly does good, he gets a cut of the Autzen gate and a bonus. When he does bad, the academic side pays. Now that Moffitt is CFO for the entire UO, instead of just the AD, do you think she’ll start looking out for the academic side? Get with the transparency program? I’m skeptical. But maybe Kelly will send the faculty and students a nice thank you letter for paying his legal bills, like the one he sent Lyles:

PS – Thanks to bojack.org for his link to this.

Chip Kelly to leave UO for Buccaneers

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1/23/2012: Or maybe that offer wasn’t rich enough, according to the latest from the RG
and Canzano.

1/22/2012: I didn’t check, but I assume that’s some sort of a football team, not a rum drink with an umbrella. Story here. More here. Under the NCAA college football is so corrupt it soils everyone who touches it, even an apparently good guy like Kelly. Presumably he’ll leave UO holding the bag for any NCAA penalties regarding Willie Lyles. According to Kelly’s contract Rob Mullens could fine him to recover UO’s costs, but I don’t think Mullens has got the stones – and anyway, it’s just the academic side’s money. His UO contract is here.

Even ignoring the possible infractions, Kelly will have to pay UO some serious money to break his contract – $3,750,000 by my count. What do you bet the athletic side tries to keep it all?

 More here:

Who will pay UO’s NCAA fine?

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11/11/2011: The NCAA investigation of the Kelly / Lyles deal is winding down. Many people expect a settlement this month. Maybe. One likely outcome is self-punishment: UO agrees to limits on players, gives up a bowl game, and pays a fine. Where would the money come from? Kelly’s contract is here, with this clause:

So, Rob Mullens could fine Kelly for the NCAA violations, etc. A day’s pay would be about $20,000, but there’s no upper limit and Kelly would not seem to have much recourse. Will Mullens do this? Probably not his best career move. I’m guessing the athletic department will announce they will pay, and then Jamie Moffitt will find some way to pass the cost off to the academic side.

League of the Violators

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11/8/2011: More public records are coming out on the Kelly / Lyles deal, courtesy of Adam Jude of the RG. The Oregonian report notes the documents include:

Email exchanges between Glazier, Ron Barker, Pac-12 associate commissioner for governance and enforcement; Steve Duffin, NCAA associate director of enforcement; Angie Cretors, NCAA associate director of agents, gambling and amateurism activities; Bill Clever, UO executive assistant athletic director for compliance, and James O’Fallon, UO law professor emeritus and the athletic department’s faculty rep.

Here’s a taste of the emails, more later. Everyone knows Kelly paid Lyles for Seastrunk and the other Texas players, the question is whether the evidence is so obvious the NCAA can’t ignore it, or whether the AD could come up with some scapegoat to take the fall for Chip Kelly. That seems to be getting harder given how much coach seemed to love chatting with Lyles. We paid “The Cleaner” Mike Glazier $75,000 in student tuition money, but things still look dirty. Solution? Quit the NCAA and start our own “League of the Violators”. USC is in, and now Penn State, any other freedom fighters?

NCAA Investigation invoices

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10/24/2011: We reported a few weeks ago about how the UO administration is making the academic side pay half of the cost of hiring Michael Glazier, a.k.a. “The Cleaner“, the $330 an hour attorney and former NCAA insider brought in to clean up Chip Kelly’s mess. I’ve added his latest $5,758 bill to the growing pdf of his contracts and invoices. I don’t know what the trip to Waco was about, but the man’s not much of a tipper, that’s for sure.

We pay Chip Kelly $3.5 million. Shouldn’t he cover this bill himself?