[lynchburgwildcats]

Ben McLemore's former AAU coach says he received thousands of dollars in cash, lodging, meals and trips from a middle man who courted the Kansas player on behalf of sports agents and financial advisers during the 2012-13 college basketball season.

Darius Cobb, a St. Louis-based AAU coach, told USA TODAY Sports that he accepted two cash payments of $5,000 during the regular season from Rodney Blackstock, the founder and CEO of Hooplife Academy, a sports mentoring organization based in Greensboro, N.C.

Cobb says he also received three all-expense paid trips to Los Angeles — and that a cousin of McLemore's, Richard Boyd, accompanied him on two of them — for meetings in January and February with sports agents and financial advisers hoping to represent McLemore if he left for the NBA after his redshirt freshman season at Kansas. McLemore, 20, declared for the NBA draft on April 9.

http://m.usatoday.com/article/news/2131775

[jbock13]

But when Kentucky cheats, please don't bring it up!

[prototype]

Who cares!!! They gave money to a guy to influence him... Seems like a waste to me, but how can you discipline the school. There is no way to monitor every relationship a player has.

[lynchburgwildcats]

Who cares!!! They gave money to a guy to influence him... Seems like a waste to me, but how can you discipline the school. There is no way to monitor every relationship a player has.

The payments that Cobb said he received from Blackstock – and the trips to Los Angeles that Cobb says he and Boyd accepted – potentially could have jeopardized McLemore's amateur status because of NCAA rules that prohibit college players' family members, friends and coaches from accepting money or gifts from sports agents or those working on their behalf.

Just because you can't monitor every relationship doesn't mean you are immune from any sort of punishment if a player is deemed to have been ineligible. And as we all know, if you play a player that has been retroactively deemed ineligible, you get punished with vacated games at a minimum.

But it's still an NCAA violation to take money or extra benefits on behalf of a player. In addition to the AAU coach taking three free trips to LA due to hsi relationship with McLemore, one of McLemore's cousins partook in two all-expenses paid (including tickets to a Clippers game) trip to LA along with the AAU coach. The AAU coach also took money to pay for a birthday cake and party for McLemore at a bowling alley along with hotel rooms and tickets for a Kansas game.

IF the NCAA follows the precedence set in the Cam Newton laugher of a case, and as we have see lately the NCAA rarely follows their own rules and precedence, then Kansas will likely go unpunished since McLemore apparently didn't know anything about it. Even if they do get punished, all I could see happening is a slap on the wrist punishment like vacated games or something even lesser than that.

[jbock13]

If he didn't know, then he's not guilty of it.

[lynchburgwildcats]

If he didn't know, then he's not guilty of it.

That is true. But that never stopped the NCAA before, we both know they have their own agendas they have to satisfy. I don't think Kansas should be punished. Of course, I'm in the boat where I think its immoral that athletes can't profit off their name, too.

The questions though:

1) Will the NCAA use their own precedence in the Cam Newton case where there is no violation if the kid didn't know? I imagine this will be the first resort that will be taken for this case unless evidence to the contrary indicates McLemore did know.

2) If everyone directly involved doesn't talk, will they use the precedence set in the Lance Thomas case where non-compliance = innocence? With McLemore being gone, he doesn't have to be compliant with NCAA investigations anymore and there is certainly no incentive for any of the people directly involved to be compliant. And of course the NCAA has no subpoena power, so they can't make anyone talk

3) Is Kansas one of the schools that the NCAA has decided to selectively enforce the rules in favor of the school like Duke with Lance Thomas/Corey Maggette and UNC with the academic cheating?

[JK37]

But if he should have known...

Or if the school should've known whether or not he was eligible...

I'm still waiting for an NCAA member school to turn this back around on the NCAA and say the NCAA's eligibility checkers in the clearinghouse didn't do their job. I know it's a stretch.

[thepostman]

yeah, the NCAA is completely ridiculous and so I am sure they will punish everybody they can

[lynchburgwildcats]

But if he should have known...

Or if the school should've known whether or not he was eligible...

I'm still waiting for an NCAA member school to turn this back around on the NCAA and say the NCAA's eligibility checkers in the clearinghouse didn't do their job. I know it's a stretch.

While I agree with your criticisms of the clearinghouse, I don't think any of this can fall on the NCAA Clearinghouse. This stuff sounds like it all happened during the 2012-13 school year, so that would be out of the jurisdiction of the clearinghouse since they only deal with initial-eligibility. Now had this happened before he made his way to Kansas, then you would have a point, like with Memphis/Rose and Duke/Maggette.

Another question is what kind of checking did Kansas do when they saw the name of this Blackstock guy on the pass list for McLemore? There might be some institutional violations depending on the breadth, or lack of breadth, of their background checking on Blackstock. If the NCAA were to determine they didn't do proper background checking, then there could be some sort of punishment there. Letting a guy in free on a player's account from a "sports mentoring organization" halfway across the country from where McLemore is from has to raise some red flags.

I'd also love to know what the agenda is of Cobb for coming out about this now because all it can accomplish is dragging a school and a player through the mud for something neither one of those entities did wrong, based on the information in that USA Today article. I have to wonder if McLemore shunned all the agents and financial advisor buddies of Blackstock and now Blackstock is making Cobb recoup him for all the money and other benefits.