Tuesday, January 20, 2009

What do you think?

We'll get to the game momentarily, but for now I'd like to request a little reader interaction and get your opinion on Bill Self's supposed recruiting violation that is all the rage recently.

As you all know by now, per his admission, Self attended John Wall's most recent tournament and after one of the games went back to speak with the coach and happened to see Wall as well. Upon seeing him, he told him good game, but that he couldn't speak with him as stipulated by NCAA rules.

Does this bother you?

Should he/KU be punished? Why or why not?

Personally, I wish he wouldn't have done it simply because he knew Allen Vaughan was a reporter (even said hi to him) and this is obviously creating bad press - despite how minor it may seem. However, one could also argue that especially since he knew Vaughan and even acknowledged him, he obviously didn't think what he was doing was too egregious. I'm probably somewhere in between, leaning toward the latter. And since he owned up to it so quickly, reported it to KU and it's obviously minor, I wouldn't expect anything significant to materialize. Then again, with the NCAA, anything is possible as precedent means less than nothing.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Its dumb - Self should know better and that it would become a big deal due to who he is and the school he coaches for.

Anonymous said...

I see the death penalty in the KU basketball program's future.

Ok, not really. I agree with Kyle - it was dumb, Self knows better. He's got a big target on his back already. He shouldn't give the NCAA reasons to start digging or KU's rivals reasons to start calling "infraction!" The incident itself doesn't seem like a big deal, and for the reasons you stated, I don't see anything coming from this.

Hiphopopotamus said...

Agreed on both counts. Dumb, but harmless.

Anonymous said...

From what I understand of the NCAA rule, it depends on whether or not Self had put himself in a position where an exchange with Wall would be likely to happen. For instance, if Wall came up to him out of the blue, Self could greet him but not really talk further. But it counts as illegal contact if Self put himself in a position where some kind of contact is likely to occur. He has tried to counter this by stressing that he was only back there to talk to the coaches, but forgive me if I am a little skeptical of that being his true motivation.

Still, probably not a big deal no matter how it turns out.

Anonymous said...

It's not even a violation. A coach is allowed to 'greet' a recruit but nothing else. His two sentences to Wall were 1) a greeting and 2) telling Wall he couldn't talk further.

Now did he put himself in a position to 'have' to greet Wall? Of course. Would you want a coach who didn't put himself in that position?

Hiphopopotamus said...

Well put.