Noel Johnson Released from his Letter of Intent

But can anyone direct me to an example of any University aggressively and directly attacking allegations while an NCAA investigation is in progress? And the Shaun Walters lawsuit is not a good example since the University sued the agent collaterally after the report was issued.

I can think of reasons why a University would stay silent, especially for the obvious reason of making sure that the story remains under some control and someone doesn’t put his foot in his mouth, kinda like Chris Penrose telling ESPN that he rarely saw Guillory around the program, then telling Adam Rose of the LAT that he saw Guillory around Mayo’s dorm all the time. Yes, both could be true, it’s not contradictory for someone to be around an athlete’s dorm room yet at the same time be kept away from the program. But modern journalism is rumor driven, and rumors don’t take kindly to subtle distinctions, and with sports writers being the village idiots of journalism, any rumor is as good as a fact. Thus a school would prefer that the ESPN’s and the Yahoo! Sports of the world receive as little ammunition as possible, so they don’t have to respond to the breast beating morons of sport punditry.

But there are times when an aggressive, public stance is advantageous, and this would seem like a good time to mount a defense, so i wonder whether their is some NCAA regulation prohibiting school from commenting during an investigation in progress.

I’m not sure, but when the Bush-Lake stuff broke, the school and the coaches issued generic the “we are cooperating fully with the NCAA and we believe that we have done wrong but we can’t comment on specifics” statements that, at the very least, calmed down recruits and alumni. The school also mounted a behind the scenes defense, letting reporters like Scott Wolf know that they thought the allegations were bullshit, and then acting like there were bullshit by keeping the football program in an aggressive, open mode. But this wall of silence, and the new, defensive crouch along with severing ties with Sidney and allowing Johnson to decommit (wonder what, if anything, Hill heard through the grapevine that made him decommit) tells me that someone in the University is taking these Mayo-Guillory allegations and the NCAA investigation very seriously, that that someone (or someones) is not Mike Garrett.

I really don’t see how Floyd and Garrett survive this.

P.S.: I’m not going soft here. I am trying to maintain a civil tone (as was requested) as best I can and within the limits of my FDS (Floyd Derangement Syndrome). That said, I tend to believe that Louis Johnson is credible on this. After all, it’s not like Tim Floyd has ever lied before.