Larranaga on Hernandez Situation

I had not seen the statement made, indicating his "bad decisions", that's in itself a slightly telling statement. But with no legitimate proof, sounds like a new interpretation of "innocent, until proven guilty" ...either way it sucks. A lot more kids have gotten a lot more, gone on to tell about, nobody cares....miami student, thinks about it, maybe has a conversation about it, inelgable!!
Maybe I'm just butthurt about a players collegiate career being toyed with!
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I hadnt seen that exact article....what a shame. Wonder if we ever find out the truth, to the extent of his "mistakes". And if the punishment was reflective of the mistake, or reflective of someone's personal agenda
 
I had not seen the statement made, indicating his "bad decisions", that's in itself a slightly telling statement. But with no legitimate proof, sounds like a new interpretation of "innocent, until proven guilty" ...either way it sucks. A lot more kids have gotten a lot more, gone on to tell about, nobody cares....miami student, thinks about it, maybe has a conversation about it, inelgable!!
Maybe I'm just butthurt about a players collegiate career being toyed with!

You aren't just butthurt; this is the problem is today's politically charged environment and incompetently governed NCAA athletics. Sadly,- honesty, transparency and integrity are not rewarded and, in fact, often work to your detriment.
 
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I had not seen the statement made, indicating his "bad decisions", that's in itself a slightly telling statement. But with no legitimate proof, sounds like a new interpretation of "innocent, until proven guilty" ...either way it sucks. A lot more kids have gotten a lot more, gone on to tell about, nobody cares....miami student, thinks about it, maybe has a conversation about it, inelgable!!
Maybe I'm just butthurt about a players collegiate career being toyed with!
Understandable. However it went down though, when all is said and done, he brought this on himself (either being found out, or self-reporting the matter).
 
A year and a half suspension for under $500 in benefits. Lovely. The moral of the story is if you make a mistake, confess to your priest. If you tell Blake James, your career is over. What a travesty. I've never rooted for a kid more than I'll be rooting for Dewan. I hope he becomes a star in the NBA and doesn't give UM a nickel.
 
A year and a half suspension for under $500 in benefits. Lovely. The moral of the story is if you make a mistake, confess to your priest. If you tell Blake James, your career is over. What a travesty. I've never rooted for a kid more than I'll be rooting for Dewan. I hope he becomes a star in the NBA and doesn't give UM a nickel.
I think you are right. I root for him too but I think Europe is his future (the money/lifestyle isn't bad).
 


He should have been given the option to pay the money back and stay in school. It amazes me people get paid to do a job and cannot find solutions to problems but they still keep getting paid. SMH.
 
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You aren't just butthurt; this is the problem is today's politically charged environment and incompetently governed NCAA athletics. Sadly,- honesty, transparency and integrity are not rewarded and, in fact, often work to your detriment.

The NCAA is not "incompetent" in their governance, especially not their enforcement. They are selective and uneven, which is a far worse crime as they play god and determine which institutions excel and which remain exactly where they "should be."

One thing we definitely agree on...as we see with Bruce Pearl at Auburn vs. Coach L. at Miami (though FBI)...and Dewan vs. the other 2 players implicated in the same thing. Cover up, lie, and lawyer up...you shall be rewarded.

This is Miami's problem as I keep arguing. We are like the beaten step-child who has been whipped into submission. We are playing by NCAA "rules" that our competition don't even recognize anymore unless their hand is forced.


UM
 
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NCAA is rightly leery of anyone paying players. It's not that big a leap to fixing games/shaving points. I'm old enough to recall the rampant point shaving of the 50s and 60s, and more recently at BC and Arizona State. No hint of any of that with Dewan but ... that's why they crack down so hard and would never simply allow a player to pay back what he got to be "reinstated."
 
NCAA is rightly leery of anyone paying players. It's not that big a leap to fixing games/shaving points. I'm old enough to recall the rampant point shaving of the 50s and 60s, and more recently at BC and Arizona State. No hint of any of that with Dewan but ... that's why they crack down so hard and would never simply allow a player to pay back what he got to be "reinstated."

It's a huge ridiculous leap. Point shaving is incredibly rare and it's not even a guarantee. There have been attempts and failures...players who tried to influence a game on one side of the spread but it ended up the other way. One Northwestern attempt in the mid '90s was so absurd because the wagered limits were so low nobody noticed and one of the games ended up being an easy cover for the team attempting to tank. Years later when the fixing scandal became news we laughed like heck because we remembered that game...Northwestern at Michigan. Some of us were on one side and some the other. Michigan was favored by something like 23 or 24 points and never threatened to cover. Yet the Northwestern players had been told to dump that game.

Besides, betting limits on college basketball are very low. Nobody is going to risk jail time and branded for life as a cheater while potentially profiting only a few thousand dollars. Once you go beyond that it sets off bells and whistles everywhere. That's what happened in 1994 with Arizona State. I have detailed that countless times on various sites. I saw that attempt first hand and it was laughable. There were young drunk Arizona State students wearing Arizona State gear walking up and down the Strip on Friday night wagering on Oregon plus the points for the next day. They were loud and obvious and treated it like a farce. They didn't care what number they were taking.

I happened to be checking out the numbers for the Saturday card at the same time they were making their rounds. Sportsbooks stayed open very late if not all night in that era on Friday night, with the Saturday numbers already on the board. Every number looked similar from joint to joint -- per usual -- except Oregon at Arizona State. That line was consensus -13 earlier but now I'm seeing every number. I literally saw from -13 at Little Caesar's all the way down to -8.5 at Harrah's. The geniuses obviously didn't know that tiny Little Caesar's had a sportsbook so they skipped it. But from the old Aladdin all the way back to Harrah's I saw every conceivable number -- -11.5, -10.5, -9.5, whatever. Incredibly stupid to do it that way. Obviously something was going on. Finally I asked friends behind the counter about it and they detailed the loud drunk young kids wearing Arizona State garb and treating it as a joke when they played for the limit, then played for the limit again no matter what the number was moved to. My friend Doug was a sportsbook supervisor at Harrah's. He pointed out the group to me, still at Harrah's and seated at a bar. They were basically falling off the stools.

There were other games involved as well. That scandal was glaring in real time. Wise guys talking about it everywhere in Las Vegas. Then it collapsed and ended in a game with a famous reversal at halftime. It was a Saturday afternoon game with Arizona State well behind and playing awful at halftime in a game that was roughly pick-em. I'm not sure if this actually happened but there were reports that authorities went into the lockerroom and warned the team at halftime. Regardless, the team woke up with a vengeance in the second half and covered the spread comfortably.

After that Arizona State scandal the sportsbook and offshore books are very cognizant of unusual activity. There are now computer programs that detect that type of thing. That's why the college basketball scandals have disappeared. They would be overly obvious. The only recent fixes or suspected fixes have been in one-on-one sports like tennis, where it is easy to control with so few variables at hand, unlike football with 22 players out there at all times or basketball with 10.
 
Awsi, only thing I'd take issue with with in your post was, to repeat, there was a time in the 50s and 60s when point shaving and fixed games were NOT "incredibly rare." It was rampant and done over more than a decade -- from the dawn of the 1950s through around 1962. And, there were likely players who were never found out.

I agree the financial attractiveness of an NBA career and sports books' vigilance are two mitigating factors nowadays (the potential fixers are no doubt smarter too) but ... what has not changed is human nature. For all the players not in line for the big bucks leaving school, the temptation could well be real.
 
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The NCAA is not "incompetent" in their governance, especially not their enforcement. They are selective and uneven, which is a far worse crime as they play god and determine which institutions excel and which remain exactly where they "should be."

One thing we definitely agree on...as we see with Bruce Pearl at Auburn vs. Coach L. at Miami (though FBI)...and Dewan vs. the other 2 players implicated in the same thing. Cover up, lie, and lawyer up...you shall be rewarded.

This is Miami's problem as I keep arguing. We are like the beaten step-child who has been whipped into submission. We are playing by NCAA "rules" that our competition don't even recognize anymore unless their hand is forced.


UM

I agree - wrong word choice.
 
A year and a half suspension for under $500 in benefits. Lovely. The moral of the story is if you make a mistake, confess to your priest. If you tell Blake James, your career is over. What a travesty. I've never rooted for a kid more than I'll be rooting for Dewan. I hope he becomes a star in the NBA and doesn't give UM a nickel.

Without getting into specifics because I don't want to incriminate anyone I can assure you that what's being said & reported with Dewan and alleged improprieties is inaccurate. Unfortunately, good people get caught in the cobwebs of some of this stuff. Truth be told, I feel for Coach L. They're stringing him along with these lies. The world of college athletics (not just basketball) is a lot worse than they're leading on. For decades now, kids have received a whole lot more than what is alleged that Dewan got, but never get caught. Difference here was that a whistleblower implicated Dewan for something that never materialized.
 
Without getting into specifics because I don't want to incriminate anyone I can assure you that what's being said & reported with Dewan and alleged improprieties is inaccurate. Unfortunately, good people get caught in the cobwebs of some of this stuff. Truth be told, I feel for Coach L. They're stringing him along with these lies. The world of college athletics (not just basketball) is a lot worse than they're leading on. For decades now, kids have received a whole lot more than what is alleged that Dewan got, but never get caught. Difference here was that a whistleblower implicated Dewan for something that never materialized.
I don't disagree in general, but the main difference here was that Dewan was one of only a few players that get into that 50-50 mode with a year or more left. Do they go pro or not? 50-50 chance the market for a draft will look rewarding. NCAA won't even allow certain contact with agents, agent-wannabes, or anyone that can professionally advise someone like Dewan what route is best, what the draft outlook is, etc. Eligibility is yanked.

So they are ripe for agent-types and their minions that want to get a new commission-earning pro client sooner or later, and try to grease the wheels to further that. It's not the same as sneaker or boosters money to get someone to choose a program (college) its just a few hundred or thousand here or there to tide the player over and whet his appetite, and some perks that pale in comparison to the big bags for signing with a school.

There's little doubt Dewan and his "crew" had contacts with Dawkins or his stooges, didn't report it, and seems to have probably accepted a few small potato perks and maybe "entertained" some ongoing relationship with a future-agent deal. The real problem is the catch-22 no-win position a Dewan-50-50-type is placed in by dumb NCAA rules. I sympathize with someone in Dewan's position; whether he got over-punished by Miami-hating admins is another issue.
 
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I don't disagree in general, but the main difference here was that Dewan was one of only a few players that get into that 50-50 mode with a year or more left. Do they go pro or not? 50-50 chance the market for a draft will look rewarding. NCAA won't even allow certain contact with agents, agent-wannabes, or anyone that can professionally advise someone like Dewan what route is best, what the draft outlook is, etc. Eligibility is yanked.

So they are ripe for agent-types and their minions that want to get a new commission-earning pro client sooner or later, and try to grease the wheels to further that. It's not the same as sneaker or boosters money to get someone to choose a program (college) its just a few hundred or thousand here or there to tide the player over and whet his appetite, and some perks that pale in comparison to the big bags for signing with a school.

There's little doubt Dewan and his "crew" had contacts with Dawkins or his stooges, didn't report it, and seems to have probably accepted a few small potato perks and maybe "entertained" some ongoing relationship with a future-agent deal. The real problem is the catch-22 no-win position a Dewan-50-50-type is placed in by dumb NCAA rules. I sympathize with someone in Dewan's position; whether he got over-punished by Miami-hating admins is another issue.

Dewan to the NBA was never a done deal. It was always a 50-50 chance. Being a 305 kid there was a lot of talk in the local HS community that he'd be a 1-and-done player, or at the very least play a few seasons before moving on to the league. However, many NBA scouts knew he had some development to do. They're still keeping an eye on him and will continue to do so. Best case scenario at this point is that a team will like his upside enough to take a flyer on him and stick him on their G-league squad for a year or two before playing on the big stage. Worst case scenario is he goes overseas and has a 10+ year playing career on the international circuit. He won't be the first Mickey D's AA to take that route and won't be the last.
 
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