As most Ducks football fans know by now, Yahoo! Sports recently published a lengthy “investigation” after a five-hour interview with Texas based recruiting scout Willie Lyles. After months of silence and not answering questions directly, Lyles “confessed” that the University of Oregon paid him for his relationship and influence over high school players rather than his scouting services.
This would be a direct violation of NCAA rules, and serious consequences would be brought down upon the Oregon program. But how much of this is actually believable?
Initially, when all of this news came out, we viewed Lyles as a shady character with a questionable past. But now, we are convinced that this man is worse than originally expected. Lyles has been at the center of controversy before. In 2007, Lyles said that it would cost Texas A&M $80,000 to get Patrick Peterson (who eventually signed with LSU) to play football.
When asked about Lyles, Peterson responded with this comment: "I have never had any type of relationship with Willie Lyles, and he had no influence on my decision to attend LSU, or any other school for that matter… He (Lyles) had no involvement with my recruiting process, and I resent the fact that my name has come up in these allegations. I chose LSU because it's a great school with a great football program. I never received nor was I offered anything to go to LSU, and anyone saying otherwise is being dishonest."
What makes Lyles' story even more difficult to believe, is that he is just now coming out with “his side of the story” months after news first broke. What we want to know, how does he magically remember all of these claims, dates and records now and why didn't he remember them in the first place. Lyles has already said that his career in college football is over. This is nothing more than a desperate man with nothing to lose trying to get some sort of misconceived vengeance. Lyles says Oregon never directly asked him to steer players, only that he now realizes he was doing so. Call me crazy, but we trust a Coach with no history of wrongdoing over some bum’s gut feeling.
This article is not an attempt to say Oregon is completely innocent, because Oregon is the same as every other program. Operating in the grey-area has become standard, and that is all that this is. Claiming Oregon paid for players and claiming they paid for a relationship are two completely different things and much different in level of moral foul play. Now do we think the University of Oregon has done things while Chip Kelly has been at the U of O that are shady? Yes. But do we believe that every other program in America has done the equivalent of these things? Without a doubt, yes.
The University of Oregon has been nothing but forthcoming in releasing all of the information that is related to the topic and are hiding nothing, to their credit. The NCAA is thorough with all of their investigations (the USC investigation took 5 years) and this story will not die soon. Oregon will have their chance to defend themselves, and that will be the moment of truth.
This will all comb over at some time after Willie Lyles is finally exposed for the dirty weasel he is.
No comments:
Post a Comment