ncaa: the clearinghouse

OR: O LET NOT DO IT

bear-shotgun demar-dorsey-ua-game

OR: LET'S ALL BLAME THE SHOTGUN-WIELDING BEAR FOR KILLING OUR SECONDARY.

This story is still rapidly developing, but in a nutshell this is it:

"Demar is an NCAA qualifier with a 2.5 or 2.6 GPA and an 18 score on the ACT," said [Boyd Anderson head coach Mark] James. "But he hasn't yet been granted at Michigan."

In one swoop, ESPN's Corey Long clarifies the bizarre split between optimism and pessimism on the "controversial" recruit who could just save the Michigan secondary. The optimism was about his ability to qualify. The pessimism was about whether it would matter. Sam Webb's assertions on the radio that it would be interesting to see where Dorsey ends up if it's not Michigan suggested that the problem was something other than a test score, but James's coach would like to take the thunder out of that:

"Right now I think the plan would be to re-open his recruitment and see what's out there," James said. "If he can't find something he likes he'll probably go to a juco for a year and try it again."

James says the coaches "continue to work on it," and Dorsey gets to twist in the wind longer. At least he's used to it by now.

There are two ways to be qualified. One is to be qualified. The other is to be Michael Oher or Derrick Rose, in which case you are "qualified" via a string of correspondence classes and/or a sketchy test score. Michigan takes qualified guys, but when scare quotes get involved Michigan tends to go the other way. Ask new Bearcat Adrian Witty. Is Dorsey qualified or "qualified"? We don't know until he enrolls somewhere, whether it's Michigan or Florida State or a JUCO. Available evidence suggests the latter, in which case it's better if Michigan doesn't enroll him. But still…

This situation is the Draper/Labadie/compliance dysfunction all over again, with miscommunication between Rodriguez—who went to bat for Dorsey with a provost before signing day and got a signoff on him—and admissions replacing the lack of communication between the football administration and compliance. It's a different sclerotic artery, but the root cause is the same.

Unfortunately—wait. No. Fortunately, in this case we don't have a meticulously documented report to the NCAA featuring 18 months worth of emails between the main parties, so it's hard to tell who's at fault. The proverbial reliable sources have reported that Rodriguez is recruiting with an eye towards NCAA minimums that most programs claim to be above until push comes to shove, while admissions is looking at a larger-than-usual number of players near the borderline and having a little freakout. We've finally gotten some clarification on exactly how Michigan hamstrings itself in recruiting: they'll take kids who scrape by the NCAA minimums (hello Marques Slocum) but only so many.

So here we are, with a kid who said he'd come to Michigan having held up his end of the bargain only to get stiffarmed by some bureaucrats hell-bent on being a hooker who won't do that. If there was a time to shoot Dorsey down it was before he signed a letter of intent, kicked off a media firestorm, and got everyone all excited about having someone in the secondary approximately as fast as Denard Robinson. Saying "we didn't mean it" and kicking the guy to Florida State or a JUCO or somewhere else validates the firestorm, makes other high-caliber guys worried that they will be cast aside when admissions turns him down, and, most importantly, is totally unfair to Dorsey.

Admissions should feel free to say "not again, except maybe a few kids," but after someone in the university greenlighted an offer you can't take it back because you made a mistake. If Dorsey is qualified sans scare quotes and doesn't end up at Michigan, everyone gets hurt for no benefit whatsoever. If he's legal in an extremely technical sense only, well… I'd prefer it if Michigan avoided another investigation, but I would like it even better if people in Michigan's athletic department had a clue what other people were doing.

Er. Rich Rodriguez called into WTKA this morning and dropped one important bit of news: Justin Turner and Adrian Witty are not cleared yet. Which… uh… directly contradicts multiple statements from Rodriguez himself—or at least directly contradicts how those statements were reported—from Big Ten Media Days.

A transcription of the answer to the question "All the freshmen are ready to go, right?"

Not exactly. We've still got a couple that are working through clearinghouse issues. This recently came up. Just about all of them were here for the summer with the exception of a couple guys, and those two are still not resolved. We're still waiting on Justin Turner to get some information in. We're hoping that will be before Sunday. [Garbled] within a week. The other one is Adrian Witty, who's got a test score we're still waiting on. So he's kind of in limbo right now. … Hopefully either one or both of them will get resolved very quickly.

If it happens [later in camp] we'll bring them in a week later.

So it sounds like Turner's thing is just paperwork. Witty, on the other hand, is still waiting for a qualifying score and might not make it in.