No worries on the financial end of things for Dareus. I hate to see him miss against Penn State, but just be glad this is all over now. North Carolina fans would kill to have that sense of certainty. And don't kid yourselves. Based on the fact that there was a second trip that we didn't know about, this could have been much, much worse. Take your slap on the wrist, write your check, flash a big smile, and keep counting down the days to you sign your name on the dotted line of a contract with about seven zeros on it.
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Over the off-season, and especially lately with the Dareus thing, there’s been a good bit of whining and vague accusations about our compliance department and what they did or did not do correctly.
Listen, because this is important: in the past two seasons, Alabama has navigated a veritable minefield of potential major NCAA infractions, sanctions, and other trouble, and we’ve come out of it, for all intents and purposes, with a couple of burn marks on our digiprint cammies.
We owe the men and women in the compliance department a huge thank you for the work they do every day, and especially for the highly skillful way they’ve pulled us through these situations. I know, having wins vacated and losing Dareus for a few games sucks, but if we had been practicing the same brand of compliance we were in the Dubose era, we might not even have a football team right now.
If you want to put someone on your chirstmas card list, or you have a spare thank you note sitting around, please send it to the compliance department. They have a mostly thankless job. We only hear about them when someone is in trouble and we all act like we’re off our meds, so god only knows the kind of abuse they end up taking.
I don’t have any insider information, but if there’s a better compliance department out there (when taking “strength of schedule” into account), I’ve not heard of it.
I'm wrong all the time.
by PeteHoliday on Sep 3, 2010 12:41 AM CDT reply actions 9 recs
You hammered that home
like a Master Carpenter, sir! +1
"...because you've got your mind right, and that's the way we like it." Nick Saban
so he's using his financial aid to pay for this?
i wholeheartedly approve of this use of my tax money.
Roll 'Bama Roll: The Champagne of 'Bama Blogs.
by kleph on Sep 3, 2010 6:55 AM CDT reply actions 3 recs
So what do we call . . .
. . . what Marcel did? It wasn’t immoral or unethical because there was no intent to do wrong. It wasn’t illegal because NCAA rules are not government laws. I suppose it was just naive. I understand that when you do something naive or out of ignorance, you have to pay whatever price comes. But does the NCAA think that punishing one student-athlete for doing something naive and ignorant will deter other 19 and 20 year-olds from doing something naive? Just questions.
“Illegal” does not have to mean government laws. See, e.g., “Illegal Motion”. So far as I am aware, there are no government regulations on the movements of players prior to the snap.
So, yeah, what he did was illegal with respect to the NCAA bylaws.
And, yes, the NCAA does think this sort of punishment will help, and they’re probably right. Had Dareus been let off with no punishment it would not give other athletes any incentive to ask questions about the source of the benefits they’re getting. Remember: he knew he was getting extra benefits, he just didn’t know where they were coming from, and I think the NCAA would just prefer student athletes not take benefits from anyone, ever.
Makes a lot of sense to me, actually.
I'm wrong all the time.
Good points . . .
. . . about the use of the word “illegal.” He unknowingly broke the rules. But whatever happened to warnings for a first offense? Why do they need to punish kids who act naively on a first offense?
“Warning for a first offense” is kind of a myth, really, and especially so when you spend hours in meetings getting compliance drilled into your brain.
He might not have known he was breaking the rules, but he should have known enough about the rules to know he was treading on thin ice.
I'm wrong all the time.
Now that I don't understand
He thought his close friend was buying him all these things. He was deceived. So perhaps he should have asked more questions and been less trusting of his “friend,” but if you are deceived there is no way that you can know that you are on thin ice. Seems like real justice and fairness try to take account of these things. But I guess I’m just naive, too.
In a word: horseshit.
His “friend” did not have a history of buying him $1,000+ trips to Miami, which means that when Dareus wins a MNC, gets MVP honors, and suddenly his “friend” is offering him $1,000+ trips to Miami, something should have given him pause.
To a degree, it did, as evidenced by the fact that he tried to pay back some of the trip from the get-go. This ruling should cause athletes to ask more questions when they suddenly start receiving big gifts from people who never gave them big gifts before, and that’s precisely the point of it.
Dareus isn’t a bad kid, but he made a mistake (that he could have easily prevented) — one that will be much more obvious to student athletes in the future.
I'm wrong all the time.
So you're not buying the story that he was deceived?
In that case, he certainly deserved more than a 4-game suspension. But it seems there’s something about his story that convinced investigators that he did not know he was being treated this way because he will likely be a 1st-round draft choice. You can’t have it both ways. He can’t be both deceived and receiving gifts that he knew he shouldn’t be receiving. When you are a very young man caught in a deception of this sort, “should have known better” only means “it was a tough life lesson.” It does not mean that he had the capacity to sniff out the deceit but chose not to. These are lessons that you can only learn by experience. And punishing the deceivers rather than the deceived seems more in line with justice.
Though I do appreciate your remarks about being fortunate that he only got 2 games. That’s the part that makes it a puzzle for me. If Marcel should have been able to sniff it out, why would he get only a 2-game suspension? And if the argument is that he was genuinely deceived, why would he get any suspension? And the latter seems to be the basis of an appeal by the university.
If my understanding is accurate...
and I’m not saying that it is, then it was Dareus’ cooperation and honesty that helped lessen the punishment.
Ignorance does not equal innocence.
I’m not sure another way to explain this, and it might be something that requires a lot of reading in the NCAA bylaws to grasp, but I’m going to try one more time:
Dareus was deceived because he didn’t question why he was suddenly getting $1,000 trips from friends or where that money was coming from. That, to be blunt, was pretty damn stupid, and it’s something that you can guarantee the compliance department warned him and everyone else on the team about (because there are NCAA bylaws which take those things into account).
So the problem with this:
You can’t have it both ways. He can’t be both deceived and receiving gifts that he knew he shouldn’t be receiving.…is that you didn’t really read what I wrote. I never said he knew. I said he didn’t ask enough questions and that, in and of itself, is a mistake. But, more to the point, it doesn’t matter where these “gifts” came from, he probably shouldn’t have accepted them at all simply because they were so far outside the norm.
He clearly didn’t realize that (or was at least able to convince the NCAA that he didn’t), but this ruling will help other folks to realize it.
If you try to understand, rather than trying not to understand, you’ll have better luck.
I'm wrong all the time.
Your patience with us slower folk is astounding . . .
. . . but perhaps I’m giving you too much credit.
Perhaps your the slow one. Let me put it simply for you: If not questioning was “pretty damn stupid” of Marcel, then why did he only get a 2-game suspension? Is it because the folks at the NCAA are nice people who don’t want to ruin anybody’s day?
There must be a significant part . . .
. . . of the story that is missing.
Consider this:
1) Saban clearly did not think that Dareus was going to get suspended. He practiced with the first teamers all the way up through the beginning of this week.
2) The NCAA went out of their way to say that Dareus was one of the most truthful student-athletes that they had ever interviewed.
3) Has there ever been an athlete caught receiving a gift of this size and get punished for less than 6 games, whether he was truthful or not?
4) Given the size and source of the gift, one would think that Saban and the university would be ecstatic that Dareus only got a two-game suspension. And yet, we are appealing the suspension.
All of this leads me to believe that there was something about the way in which Dareus was deceived that led a lot of people to think that he should not be held culpable. In other words, something about what happened kept the NCAA, Saban, and the university from saying anything remotely similar to “It was a pretty damn stupid thing for Dareus to accept these gifts.”
1) Saban clearly did not think that Dareus was going to get suspended. He practiced with the first teamers all the way up through the beginning of this week.
I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. I think that tells you that Saban didn’t think he would get suspended for the Penn State game, but I’d bet pretty good money that they weren’t counting on him to play against San Jose State.
3) Has there ever been an athlete caught receiving a gift of this size and get punished for less than 6 games, whether he was truthful or not?
Good point in some ways. Jerrell Harris with the laptop last year surely couldn’t have exceeded 1,800 by much (if any), but admittedly there was apparently some issues there with him not being forthcoming (even if not outright dishonest).
4) Given the size and source of the gift, one would think that Saban and the university would be ecstatic that Dareus only got a two-game suspension. And yet, we are appealing the suspension.
As I said in the Masoli thread, I think the fact that we are appealing is more of a token show of support to Dareus and other players that we are behind them and that we will exhaust all means available in our defense of them. I don’t think it’s something that is being done because UA really feels there is any meaningful chance of success on appeal.
"Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself." -- Milton Friedman
by outsidethesidelines on Sep 3, 2010 4:15 PM CDT up reply actions
You may be right . . .
. . . but it seems as if Saban’s past pre-season policy was to relegate to 2nd or 3rd string anyone that might be ineligible in an upcoming game. Didn’t Ingram and Jones get held out of first string reps the week before Va Tech?
Which in hindsight
turned out to be unnecessary for Mark and Julio. It stands to reason that Saban decided not to make that mistake with Dareus.
1) I disagree, and I don’t really think you are an authority on what Coach Saban is thinking, even if this decision appears incongruous with previous decisions, you’re not operating with anywhere near all of the facts.
2) This is why he was only suspended for two games
3) Probably.
4) The two are not mutually exclusive. You can be ecstatic and still want better.
You can believe in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one gets filled up first.
The biggest problem here is that you think you have all the answers despite not having the faintest clue how the NCAA works.
So, yes, very simple:
1) He received a benefit that he should not have. The source was an agent.
2) Intent doesn’t particularly matter, except as a mitigating circumstance
3) If he’s not punished at all it gives an incentive for players to take benefits laundered through third parties and then claim they never knew the agent existed. This eliminates (or at least reduces) that incentive.
So, to reiterate: the punishment makes sense, it doesn’t prove that there’s something going on we don’t know about (or any other vaguely conspiratorial thing), and generally all appears to be right with the world.
I'm wrong all the time.
At the risk of opening a big can of Pete's Famous Whoopass...
Do you still stand by your argument in this post that there was no need for Dareus to go talk to the compliance staff when he got back from this trip? You’re saying that bells and whistles should’ve been going off in his head, right? Wouldn’t it have been helpful for him to get the compliance department’s opinion?
(And before you ask, I’m wracking my brain to remember how we knew he DIDN’T go talk to them at the time. I think he said something in an interview to the effect that he was encouraged to go talk to them AFTER the UNC started coming out. Regardless, we were working with the assumption that he had not talked to them before that.)
If I'm wearing a turban, it means Auburn is playing Iraq.
Uh oh.
"Let's go be champions, boys!" - Greg McElroy
(Formerly SugarBowl93)
by RememberTheRoseBowl on Sep 4, 2010 1:13 AM CDT up reply actions
Why is everyone slowly backing away from me?
LOL
If I'm wearing a turban, it means Auburn is playing Iraq.
C’mon, this stuff is simple: it SHOULD HAVE set off alarm bells, but didn’t. If it didn’t set off alarm bells, why the hell would he have gone to talk to compliance?
It’s like you people live in a different world.
I'm wrong all the time.
So you're saying that it SHOULD HAVE set off alarm bells,
at which point he SHOULD HAVE gone to talk to the compliance staff? Yes?
So then, I’m just trying to figure out institutionally what we should have done (or should have been doing?) differently to avoid this problem. Not that we did anything wrong, but somehow we lost the services of our best defensive player for two games. So how could we have avoided that?
My previous point was that according to Dareus, it DID set off enough alarm bells that he felt he had to leave the party and also that he apparently went to stay with family (speculation on OTS’s part) rather than staying at the hotel. And he got receipts for the expenses that he paid Austin back for (which apparently wasn’t all of the expenses). But apparently that wasn’t enough for him to decide he needed to talk to the compliance staff, not until the UNC investigation started anyway.
If I'm wearing a turban, it means Auburn is playing Iraq.
Also (and this is sure to get the Whoopass treatment)
If you could dial down the condescension such as this:
It’s like you people live in a different world.
just a little, I would really appreciate it. Check out some of OTS’s posts and kleph’s posts to see how a truly classy, gracious person discusses topics with someone who might know less about a given subject than they do. I’m just trying to understand better; you treating me like an idiot doesn’t help with that, no matter how good it makes you feel.
If I'm wearing a turban, it means Auburn is playing Iraq.
....and a question:
Is there a way on here to find recently active Fanshots? I see on the Fanposts how it will list them by recent activity. But I can’t find any decent way to keep track of activity on these Fanshots once they drop off the sidebar on the front page.
Thanks.
If I'm wearing a turban, it means Auburn is playing Iraq.
I will just throw out that Dareus might have
ignored past precedent on how his “friends” treat him because of his mom’s illness. “Marcell, you really need to get away this weekend and take your mind off things. Come on down to Miami with me and hang out. And don’t worry about the money, it’s on me. You need a break.”
So yeah, he made a mistake, but…
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