Florida suspensions

There has been some good online investigative work and writing on the many Florida football blogs.  Like mgoblog, lawyers have chimed in.

You knew there was substance there when 9 players were suspended and the whole season was changed for the worse.  Florida had to take major action and they did.  In other words, live with it now or live with it later.

The details went from the UF police to the prosecutor via every website.  It started with chargebacks--there just weren't that many of them at the Florida bookstore and now there were a bunch, all to Florida football players.  The kingpin was apparently Jordan Smith.  His motive included paying rent (already paid-for by his scholarship) and parking fines as well as ipads and headphones like the others.

At first it seemed like just using the funds they were provided (i.e., the debit cards) for relatively minor things they shouldn't have.  Now we learn it was much more than that:  it was illegally transferring funds on to those debit cards in order to do that.  And it was not one instance, it was nine players all doing similar things with stolen credit card numbers, some even using the same numbers more than once.  There were twenty or thirty attempts--some successful, others not--to transfer thousands of dollars from the stolen credit card numbers.  Where they got the credit card information, one victim is from California, is not clear.

So the campus police forwarded the information to prosecutors...  The students are only suspended for football while they wait for when the charges are filed.  Most of the nine are apparently eligible for first time diversion programs.

This is serious.  It could be looked-at as a conspiracy or RICO Act violation.  For the University of Florida it is a large group of players abusing their scholarships, and team membership, to the point of contempt.

Once again, usually it is the case with dumb crimes by dumb people, there was a huge trail of evidence.  It included lies like their cards were stolen, including girlfriends, and blaming it on nonexistent agents.  How could they think the illegal transfers wouldn't be found?  How could they think the pattern of iPads and Beats wouldn't be noticed?  No reasonable person can think transferring money from or using an unknown or stolen credit card is the right thing to do.

Et is amazing Florida beat Tennessee and Kentucky.  Jim McElwain appears to have his hands tied given the speed of the process.  These crimes occurred in July, were paid back in August, then the meticulous UF police documentation.  Just like someone said in the case of the Steubenville rapist denied the playing field at Youngstown State, 'Sometimes you do everything for someone and it just isn't enough.'

We're starting to see in these cases, as if there was ever a nine-person conspiracy like this, that sometimes it isn't the school's problem.  McElwain was right when he said they've already moved on.  They're not going to get them back and who is to say they'd be wanted if they did.  The fastest and best thing the University of Florida can do is leave these nine individuals to their own devices and move on.

FBI NCAA basketball investigation after the break.

It is amazing, the ability to do something no one else can to the benefit of the system and everyone.  Do it because it is good to do.

It reminds of the FIFA breakup.  Huge.  Good of the people.  It is also a reminder of its international roots.

The guy who made it happen, the snitch, is Martin Blazer.  He went undercover informant too and it is a little like entrapment except that everyone was perfectly comfortable with it, as if they had done it before.

And that is what is so stunning about it.  Sure there is the Nick Nolte movie with Shaq and we all knew.  But we didn't.   We could never see exactly how.  We couldn't see it live.

This is the side of things that Pitino and others learned early in their careers.  Accepting money from a shoe company to bring in a recruit makes the team better, the program more valuable, and the apparel company happy.  The prospect, who is shopping around, gets the best deal he can for himself and his family.  Maybe agents or financial advisors are involved in the chain as well.  Everyone is happy.

Another key player in this is Brian Bowen, the last five-star remaining at the time.

The head coach himself won't do it.  He already makes a ton of money and he can't get his hands that dirty.  This is what all those well dressed, important looking assistants do.