More From the NCAA Cartel
By Nocera is doing great work:
When his coach, Jim Calhoun, broke the news that the N.C.A.A. was still investigating him, Boatright collapsed in Calhoun’s arms. In tears, he called his mother, Tanesha, who began weeping uncontrollably. As I chronicled on Saturday, it was her acceptance of plane tickets a year or so ago that had caused his first suspension. The N.C.A.A. had ruled the tickets an “improper benefit,” and had ordered him to sit out six games and pay a $100-per-month fine to repay the tickets. What more, she wondered, could the N.C.A.A. want?
A lot, it turned out. Tanesha is a single mother raising four children on a small salary. The N.C.A.A. investigators viewed her circumstances as a cause for suspicion, not sympathy. For instance, she owns a car. Where did she get the money to pay for it, they asked? How did she pay for her home? And so on.
Concluding that she had no choice but to cooperate — otherwise, her son would surely pay a severe price — Tanesha turned over her bank statements, as the N.C.A.A. demanded. Four N.C.A.A. investigators pored through her financial records and conducted interrogations in Aurora, seeking “evidence” that she was getting money from “improper” sources. (Tanesha declined to comment.)
When the investigators saw a series of cash deposits in her bank account, they demanded to know the source of the money. She told them: Friends had given her money so that she and her children could have a joyful Christmas. The investigators said they didn’t believe her; they felt sure that she must have gotten the money from an unscrupulous sports agent or some other party outlawed by the N.C.A.A.
This rules would be silly and remarkably intrusive even the NCAA actually afforded some measure of due process, which of course it doesn’t.