Private Emails Of The NCAA Infractions Committee Show Members Comparing The Reggie Bush Case To The Oklahoma City Bombing
LA Times - In private emails, members of the NCAA infractions committee that sanctioned USC in the Reggie Bush scandal derided the university for hiring Lane Kiffin and compared the case surrounding former running backs coach Todd McNair to the Oklahoma City bombing.
The emails were among nearly 500 pages of previously sealed documents the NCAA filed Tuesday in McNair’s long-running defamation lawsuit against the organization.
“Paul Dee was brought in at Miami to clean up a program with serious problems. USC has responded to its problems by bringing in Lane Kiffin,” committee member Rodney Uphoff wrote in an undated memo to other members of the group. “They need a wake-up call that doing things the wrong way will have serious consequences.”
Another committee member, Roscoe Howard, took a similar position in a March 2010 email to the group.
“Lack of institutional control … (and do we add the hiring of Lane Kiffin?), is a very easy call for me,” Howard wrote.
In February, California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled the NCAA couldn’t seal hundreds of pages of documents in the case. The NCAA had until last Friday to decide which documents to file publicly.
The NCAA argued releasing the information would hamper future investigations by the organization.
Uphoff’s memo compared McNair’s case — in which the committee determined he engaged in unethical conduct related to the Bush scandal — to circumstances surrounding the Oklahoma City bombing.
“But there is no question that the evidence in this case is much stronger than against [Terry] Nichols in the OKC case,” Uphoff wrote.
He argued against upholding “too high of a burden of proof” for USC and defended the “inconsistencies re dates and details about events that spanned over 15 months” by a key witness.
Uphoff also expressed doubt about Bush’s innocence.
“But … it is inconceivable to me that an innocent person in Bush’s situation with all that he has at stake, wouldn’t come forward with the documents to prove his innocence,” Uphoff wrote. “Accordingly, we should hold him accountable. … Given the limited powers of the NCAA enforcement staff we emasculate them if we allow ex athletes to refuse to cooperate and suffer no adverse inference from a failure to supply information under these circumstances.”
Wait is this really how the NCAA Infractions Committee operates? These are the people who are deciding the penalties for programs? The ones who take Heismans and scholarships away and vacate wins? People who email each other that a school should be punished for hiring a coach they don’t like and who compare taking some money to play a game to a domestic terror attack that killed 168 people? Honestly these sound like my private Gchats talking shit about people. Things we would say to our friends but would never want to go public, like how we want a school to be punished because we hate the douchebag they just hired, or how a player should have his trophy taken away because he didn’t seem like he was groveling enough. I mean that’s exactly what it is. These aren’t professionals trying to remain objective and do an important job, they’re a bunch of shit talking bros with personal vendettas and biases. USC “needs to be taught a lesson” for hiring Lane Kiffin. Unreal.
This clown ass has got to go.
