When Duck fan says "but others pay for recruiting services" - they're missing the point that they didn't pay for a real recruiting service.
Now, we'll dig in a bit into the stuff that's going to be problematic in terms of Lyles and recruiting.
There are a number of things in regulation 13.02.14 that put you in the category of a "Representative of Athletics Interests" (ie booster) - usually it's having contributed financially. In Lyles' case:
(c) Be assisting or to have been requested (by the athletics department staff) to assist in the recruitment of prospective student-athletes
Your “smoking gun” here, if nothing else, would be the handwritten notes from back in 2009 from Chip (“we appreciate your help in getting Travon, Dantae, and the whole crew here this past weekend… thanks for orchestrating everything and all your help with these guys”) and Osbourne (“Chip has told us how much help you have been in recruiting. We really appreciate your help with Travon and Dante. We appreciate all that you do for the Oregon Ducks”).
There will be a lot of stuff that gets argued (or lied about) that comes down to he said/he said and who the NCAA finds credible, but in this area, the Ducks created a paper trail with those thank you notes that I don't think they can BS their way out of. Terms like “orchestrating everything” and “how much help you’ve been in recruiting” in notes from Kelly and Osborne pretty well spell out that the guy is “assisting in recruiting” and as such, is a “representative of athletics interests”.
So, if Willie is a booster, what’s that mean… simply, it means he cannot have contact with recruits.
Under 13.1.2 which spells out Permissible Recruiters, you have:
13.1.2.1 General Rule. All in-person, on- and off-campus recruiting contacts with a prospective student-athlete or the prospective student-athlete’s relatives or legal guardians shall be made only by authorized institutional staff members. Such contact, as well as correspondence and telephone calls, by representatives of an institution’s athletics interests is prohibited except as otherwise permitted in this section.
In other words: a) only the members of the coaching staff are to be making in-person contact with recruits, and b) if you’re a booster you’re not only not allowed in-person contact, you can’t call or write. Part B, by the way, is why fans absolutely should not be sending Tweets, e-mails, Facebook posts, etc. to kids that we’re recruiting.
There is a section (the “otherwise permitted”) sub-points that allow for exceptions for friends and family that have a pre-existing relationship with the recruit, but that won’t work for Willie. A) His relationship came around because those kids were athletes… it’s not a case that he’s known Seastrunk since he was 10, and B) within that friends/family section it states contact is ok, but: “it being understood that such contacts are not made for recruiting purposes”.
What’s it all mean… well, uo has got a booster (who is on the payroll for a dubious recruiting service) helping to get recruits to take official visits, and working with the uo staff to figure out how to get things worked out so a recruit’s mom doesn’t have to sign his LOI. If you go back further (hard to say for sure at what point they’d define him as a booster), that guy was also helping the staff figure out how to get LaMike to graduate from high school because he can’t pass the Texas standardized test. And, all of this was known by the coaching staff - this isn’t some rogue booster out there doing things the staff had no knowledge of. Not only did they know he was doing it, all signs point to the fact that they were paying him to do so.
I’m seeing some of the Duck fan spin fall back a bit and turn to “well, ok, it looks like we paid for access and maybe influence, but that’s just a gray area and there were no rules being broken”… I think they’re totally ignorant and/or in denial with that stance. The rules defining boosters, plus the rules in terms of who can recruit pretty well spell out that Willie’s helping them recruit is just not going to fly. Them paying him to help recruit (which certainly seems to be the case given the sham nature of his recruiting service, and is the conclusion that Willie himself came to), is really not going to fly.
This may not be a case of “if you make sure player XYZ goes to our school, we’ll give you $25K”, but the NCAA is pretty clear on who they want to limit recruiting activities to, and is going to frown upon the notion of a school throwing a nice chunk of cash at a little recruiting helper who was well outside the definition of those allowable recruiters.
At the very least the involvement with Seastrunk and the other two (this is at the very least) that Lyles helped “orchestrate everything” in terms of the 10/31/09 recruiting trip would seem to be major recruiting violations. I’m not sure if there are other Texas recruits that Lyles was involved with that uo actively recruited, but if so, they’ll be tainted too and add to the list. I’ve not seen anything tying him to Lyles, but I wonder about Tra Carson who attended the same HS as LaMike.
Oh, and lest folks worry that the NCAA is asleep at the wheel because they didn’t ask all the questions Yahoo asked Lyles… it’s been reported that Friday after the Yahoo story broke they contacted Willie and (obviously) want to follow-up with him.
