TheGreatCatsby wrote:With the way this fbi trial testimony is going, it appears more and more Schlabach was a sucker who didn't know what he was talking about or have any concept of the bigger picture of what he was reporting on, what the person he said reportedly heard. Fell for what slimy agents said hook line and sinker. An agent can say anything on the phone about what Sean Miller supposedly offered. It can be completely made up. These shoe agents were out there creating a market, just tossing out this school would offer X this school Y to the parents of the recruit if their son signed here or there, all in the hopes that player would sign a shoe deal later. Book gets his nose in it for $15k payout, assistant coaches all over the country getting hand outs when the money is flowing to all these players, mostly all in the nba now. Doesn't look like there will be any direct evidence at all against Miller in the end. He just signed two of the top recruits in the country, no cheating needed.
As long as Miller sticks to what he says he is going to do, and gets better guards in here to play basketball how it's played in 2018 vs how it was played in 1988, then I'm all for him sticking around and doing what he does. But will hate it if the first game we get outrebounded by 10, he gets all exasperated on the whole death by inches crap again. Smaller guys can outhustle and outrebound a bigger guy any day of the week if they try, and score and create offense to boot.
I've always believed that Gatto/Dawkins and the other Miller dropped a fake story in Schlabach's hands knowing:
1. ESPN had just had their asses handed to them by Yahoo Sports the previous day on this story, publishing the agency's list of payments
2. Schlabach, a 2nd tier college football writer, would not have the sources available to dissuade him from running with it.
3. Back to number 1...the editorial staff had an incentive to get the story out. Yahoo was going to beat them to the punch.
So the scorched earth defense of "everyone does it" gets put into play, and why not call out the recruiter everyone loves to hate (Miller hasn't made fans among coaches) who is, to much of the nation, the most implausible of the top program recruiters? Oh, and throw the #1 player in the nation into the mix, which was CLEARLY a lie, not a mistake. Schlabach went with the lie.
I was at a high school game at GCU, just leaving actually, when I got a text from a friend with the link to the ESPN breaking story...Miller on FBI wiretap arranging to pay for Ayton. I had 1% battery...opening the story pretty much killed my phone after one read. I had a 45 minute drive home to the southeast valley, and I couldn't turn on the radio. I was devastated. And then I started thinking...how? How would Miller be stupid enough to talk with Dawkins? Just from an ego standpoint, why would Miller talk with a runner (we now know he did and it's just part of the game, but it helped seed my doubt that night)? I didn't know the exact timelines, but they seemed skewed. I thought "oh well...you don't know. He did it. It's right there", but it seemed odd.
I was up that night and into the next day watching Jason Scheer, who had taken a huge hit with his Ken N. story, dismantling the story. Others joined. It was a couple of days before SI and maybe CBS Sports also expressed doubts, then the Wildcat Mafia crushed Schlabach out of Twitter existence..
I still don't hear facts.