If anyone knows of a good four-letter word for "slogging," I'll happily trim this post. Still working my way through this while intrepid reporter Tom Kirby types up a story on the whole thing for tomorrow's paper.
In the meantime, I'll go ahead and throw some random thoughts up on the blog as they come to me, starting with those listed below. I'll just keep hitting refresh, if you'll keep reading...
----This is nothing new, but Sampson and his staff appear to have gone under, above or around just about any rule they weren't supposed to break. The sheer number of obviously impermissible phone calls (and I mean no way in the world everyone didn't know what was up) makes it clear they had to have known they were blowing apart the rulebook again and again and again. ----The allegation exhibits make clear that the NCAA believed that IU's in-place monitoring system was not adequate during the time all this was happening, not just because Sampson was in Bloomington. ----Of the 117 total impermissible calls, the NCAA says IU could have detected 33 before their year-end review, when an intern found all of this anyway. ----Technically speaking, IU's "two-tiered" system did work. Basically, it works like this: All the coaches had to turn in a phone log each month (all were in the Ice Miller report), and then at the end of the year, those were compared against actual phone records, which is what led to this whole hullabaloo. They were also checked monthly, but not caught until the end of the year. ----The University lays out several reasons for their claim that the failure to monitor charge isn't fair. Included among them are the following: 1) The University asserts that it's two-tiered system caught the infractions in a timely manner. 2) Most of the improper calls were undetectable, because the coaching staff lied about them. 3) That two-tiered system is far more intensive than similar compliance programs at Division I schools. 4) Perhaps most important of all, the NCAA's original investigation team didn't feel it necessary to pin a "failure to monitor" charge on the program, so it shouldn't have come later. 5) The self-imposed penalties ought to be enough to cover any infractions. ----The phone sheet, as it was before, is a veritable who's who of recruits at the time, including Dememtri McCamey, Robbie Hummel, Scott Martin and Bud Mackey. ----Jeff Meyer actually included a letter to the NCAA on the University's behalf, claiming the compliance department worked hard, did their jobs "diligently" and did their best, basically, to cover the program, in his eyes.
I'm working on getting all the documents up in this space, still having technical issues. They might not be resolved until tomorrow, but I will see them through. I'll post the rest of my Dakich interview tonight, seems like a fitting time for it.
