College programs are recruiting very talented high school student athletes all the time and in order to recruit these athletes maybe sometimes coaches might have to stretch the truth. Sometimes college coaches will guarantee playing time to certain players or include some type of extra benefits.
You might wonder how some of the top college programs in the country always stay on top? The answer I believe is because they have to do something extra to get these players.
Sometimes college programs make huge promises to the student athletes and parents just to make sure their college programs has a better chance of landing that big-time recruit.
The rules basically say you can only give a full athletic scholarship and that’s about it but we all know that most of these college programs break the rules so they can recruit players.
Now when these talented student athletes are signed up to play ball at a particular college, what if that college coach forgets about the promises that were made? My answer to that question is never believe anything that sounds too unrealistic from a college coach because it can’t all be true.
Many years ago I was recruited to play college basketball at West Virginia State College and our head coach made all of these ridiculous promises all in an effort to recruit the best talent. There were so many promises made by the head coach that it was almost like you needed to have your own account to keep track of it all.
When the head coach at West Virginia State College could not deliver on all the huge and ridiculous promises, that coach quickly lost all credibility. Never promise anyone anything no matter what it is and then change your mind.
Final thoughts: every year there’s a long list of college student athletes who can’t cut it athletically or academically at the college level. Those players generally disappear never to be heard from again or they just transfer to a different school. Because of all the promises that are made to get players, should they receive a money-back guarantee?
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Wednesday the NCAA announced in a statement, “Auburn University football student-athlete Cam Newton is immediately eligible to compete, according to a decision today by the NCAA student-athlete reinstatement staff.”
Despite rendering Cam Newton eligible, the NCAA noted:
According to facts of the case agreed upon by Auburn University and the NCAA enforcement staff, the student-athlete’s father and an owner of a scouting service worked together to actively market the student-athlete as a part of a pay-for-play scenario in return for Newton’s commitment to attend college and play football.
In the same statement Kevin Lennon, NCAA vice president for academic and membership affairs, said that Cam Newton not knowing about his dad’s activities is essentially what caused him to be completely cleared:
In 1995, the father of Arizona Wildcats basketball star Damon Stoudemire was accused by the NCAA of accepting a plane ticket from an agent. Stoudamire denied knowing of the arrangement while his father, Willie Stoudamire, also denied accepting the ticket.
After the NCAA informed Arizona of its allegation against Stoudamire’s father, the school immediately suspended the star guard while simultaneously filing an emergency appeal with the governing body seeking Stoudamire’s immediate reinstatement.
In announcing the suspension of Stoudamire, the WASHINGTON POST reported that Arizona Athletic Director Jim Livengood said at the time:
The BOSTON GLOBE subsequently reported that instead of immediately reinstating Stoudamire, as it did in the Cam Newton case, the NCAA “suspended Stoudamire for the last regular-season game, reinstating him for the postseason tournament.”
Damon had done nothing wrong, he wasn’t even aware where his father had gotten the ticket.
Frank Burlison of the LONG BEACH PRESS-TELEGRAM reported at the time that the NCAA’s final ruling on the matter, which did not come until after Stoudamire had sat out a game and before the final NCAA basketball tournament brackets were set, may have hurt Arizona’s seeding for postseason play:
Arizona (23-7), expected to earn a No. 3 seed (perhaps in the West), was given a No. 5 seed and shipped to the Midwest, where the Wildcats will face at-large selection Miami of Ohio in Dayton on Thursday.
The lower-than-anticipated slot led many to speculate that the committee may have been told by the NCAA’s Enforcement branch that Arizona All-American guard Damon Stoudamire may not regain his eligibility for the tournament.
Sources said Stoudamire, a preseason all-American, was under investigation because of the possibility his father might have accepted an airline ticket from a sports agent.
Danny Robbins of the HOUSTON CHRONICLE reported the details of the NCAA’s decision to force Stoudamire to miss a game while possibly injure his team’s March Madness seeding:
Carrie Doyle, NCAA director of eligibility, said the one-game suspension was considered a sufficient penalty. She also said Stoudamire’s father, Willie, had repaid the value of the ticket.
More from NCAA director of eligibility Doyle in 1995:
“(Agent Steve) Feldman has admitted that he wants to represent (Damon) Stoudamire and had provided the (plane) tickets to his father in hopes of representing the son on a professional level. Damon Stoudamire states that he had no knowledge of the relationship between his father and Feldman.“
The similarity between the Cam Newton and Damon Stoudamire cases is indisputable. (more…)
The three people named either have ties to agents (former UNC player Chris Hawkins), are aspiring agents (Todd Stewart, who paid for players’ hotel rooms), or already work for hotshot agents (Michael Katz of Rosenhaus Sports, whose founder, Drew Rosenhaus, was recently named one of the 40 most powerful people in the NFL according to Sports Illustrated).
Kudos to the News & Observer and Charlotte Observer, the papers who put in what the N&O described as “weeks of requests” to obtain information on the case. While they described the documents as “heavily redacted,” it’s good to have the information out there, to have a better picture of just what can go on in when there’s not enough agent-related oversight.
Indeed, the fact that all three people named were either tied to or wanted to be part of the agent business in some way is no surprise, especially not in the wake of former agent Josh Luchs‘ SI tell-all. And it’s another glimpse into just how out of control things got at North Carolina – the school is probably lucky details are coming out now, before the situation could get even worse.
One other curious detail: the N&O said Hawkins “played defensive back for the Tar Heels from 2001 to 2003 and was dismissed from the program in April of 2004.” Is someone who was kicked off the team really the type of guy you want hanging around the very same program?
UNC athletic director Dick Baddour made the right (only) move in barring Hawkins from any access to UNC athletes for five years, but one has to wonder what he was doing there in the first place…and where any of the oversight was.
This football program was out of control, and as more train-wreck details of misconduct emerge, it’s likely to only get more amazing that all this was allowed to go on. Davis did his job building UNC back up on the field, but his background in building Miami back up in the wake of off-field problems makes you wonder how all this happened in Chapel Hill…and if he can salvage the Tar Heels’ reputation.
There is no getting around the fact that immersing half your body in ice cold water after a hard workout is an agonizingly hateful experience. Yet few things as unpleasant have been shown to offer as much beneficial effect on you afterward.
If you watched the ESPN special on fall practice Training Days: Rolling with the Alabama Crimson Tide you learned that the football players at the Capstone are very well acquainted with this particularly painful paradox.
“It’s a deep burn,” said offensive lineman Barrett Jones. “But it hurts so good.”
Under Coach Saban, the practice of post practice ice baths have become a staple for the team. As the ESPN show depicted, huge tubs of ice water are on hand for the players to plop into as they depart the practice field. The logic, according to Alabama’s Director of Sports Medicine and Head Football Trainer Jeff Allen, is that it will help them recuperate from their ordeal on the field that much faster.
“If we can bring their core temperature down their bodies will not have to work as hard to recover,” Allen explained in the special. “Therefore they won’t be as fatigued and hopefully they will be better for the next practice.”
As a marathon runner who has been using ice baths for several years this comment struck me as particularly interesting. I turned to using cold immersion as a means to help reduce injury and aid recovery but the reasoning behind it I was following was somewhat different.
The idea as i understood it, was that as your body is exposed to cold the capillaries the bring oxygen to the muscles contract restricting blood flow. This creates extreme discomfort. But, within minutes, the circulatory system cranks up the pressure pushing blood into the frigid regions. This accelerates the removal of waste products in the tissues such as lactic acid which can lead to soreness.
Which makes sense (especially as the ice bath becomes bearable if you can get through the first five minutes or so) but isn’t at all what Allen was describing on the ESPN show. So to sort it out I gave a call to one of the recognized experts in the field, Douglas J. Casa, the director of the Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut.
It turns out that as reasonable as my theory seems to be, the pathophysiological proof that ice baths boost muscle repair just isn’t there.
“Right now there isn’t any evidence to show a reduction in injuries,” Casa said. “And we don’t have the evidence yet that there are actually things changing at the cellular level.”
While Casa noted he believed further studies were likely to confirm the theory in the future, the fact that a very real decrease in post-workout discomfort showed the practice had merit. In terms of training, that kind of soreness can impede later workouts and cut into progress.
The real key, as Allen pointed out in the ESPN show, was getting an athlete’s temperature down to normal levels quickly. Rather than diverting energy to cooling down, the athlete’s body can get to work on repair that much faster. Moreover, Casa said, they can better do the things necessary to recovery.
“When you are talking about a large individual like a lineman, it could take an hour or two for their body temperature to return to normal,” Casa said. “He’s going to drink better, eat better and rest better the sooner he can get cooler.”
And while the experience of dropping your body temperature from 100 plus to something more in the ballpark of normal might feel downright agonizing, it isn’t particularly dangerous for a healthy athlete, Casa said. “The real danger is if he’s overheating.”
Kentucky’s Alvin Davis Jr. savors his post-practice ice bath.
In the ESPN special, quarterback Greg McElroy commented that Alabama had only started doing post practice ice baths “over the past couple years.” That dovetails with Casa’s observation that the poiularity of the procedure had grown substantially nationwide over the past few years. Other teams that regularly use post-practice ice baths include TCU, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Ohio State.
And since the Crimson Tide has resorted to using them, the number of injuries during fall practice seems too have ebbed somewhat.
While there are the usual litany of lingering, nagging ailments there has been a paucity of those dreaded long-term injuries that we live in fear of during this part of the year. This, as our own OTS points out, is also due to Coach Saban’s emphasis on thud drills that avoid actual to-the-ground tackling outside of scrimmages.
Yet that aside, there’s another reason to use the ice baths that does have the science behind it — to increase performance. And the improvement in that department is evident every Saturday the Crimson Tide takes to the field.
Obviously, the key to Alabama’s conditioning and strength advances lay in Coach Cochran’s distinctive approach to his personal fiefdom. Yet ice baths are a key part of that for exactly the reason Allen pointed out — they shorten recovery allowing athletes to get additional quality workouts in over the same amount of time.
That leads to increase in performance which is something that has been documented. In fact, Casa is preparing to publish a research paper that examines the results of 30 studies on the subject. They found that elite athletes can experience a 3 to 4 percent increase in performance using the procedure. Which is a huge amount for players of the athletic caliber Alabama boasts in the Saban era.
This isn’t a revolutionary discovery in and of itself. It has long been known that reducing recovery time leads to significant strides in performance. In fact, a whole swath of performance enhancing drugs have been designed specifically do this very thing. Creatine, stimulants and “fancy” protein on the legal side of things were all created with the intent of helping athletes maximize their workouts by cutting down the time needed for recovery.
All of which underscores the beauty of ice baths;”They are legal, cheap and actually safer for the athletes who use them,” Casa said.
The issue of safety also underscores the advisability of ice baths — they ensure a team is prepared in case any player begins to show any symptoms of exertional heat stroke. A key point Casa stresses due to his role as the head of the Korey Stringer Institute which is a clearing house for information about the dangers of heat stroke to athletes established in the wake of the death of the Minnesota Vikings lineman in 2001.
Cold tubs on the side of the field for post practice ice baths means that trainers are already prepared to assist any player who shows the slightest sign of heatstroke.The first thing you want to do with a player suffering from heat exposure is to lower his body temperature as quickly as possible. Having a large amount of ice and water in tubs ready to go on the practice field pretty much leaves you ready in case it happens.
Moreover, forcing the players temperatures down to more reasonable levels at the conclusion of practice ensures none will develop symptoms after if they continue to heat up afterward, Casa said.
A big tip o’ the houndstooth fedora to the able assist by SI’s Will Carroll. If you want to know about injuries and how they relate to sports, you’d do well to follow him on twitter @injuryexpert.
College programs are recruiting very talented high school student athletes all the time and in order to recruit these athletes maybe sometimes coaches might have to stretch the truth. Sometimes college coaches will guarantee playing time to certain players or include some type of extra benefits.
