Sponsor note. In addition to getting you out of trouble if you punch a police horse facilitating your small business through the vagaries of contracts and, uh, legal stuff, Richard Hoeg now has a podcast about law as it impacts the games business:

If that seems like your jam, subscribe away. If not, keep Hoeg in mind whenever you get a great idea for a small business or punch a horse. 

It has been stressed to me that if you punch a horse you're on your own, at least in re: Hoeg. I'm sure there are other lawyers for that kind of stuff. Ron Kunstler? 

So Signing Day is in December now. It was… yesterday? Tuesday? Something like that. Nothing happened except the ejection of Amauri Pesek-Hickson from the class; Pesek-Hickson landed at Kansas. Pesek-Hickson seems pretty pissed off. His coach is less so:

Coaches typically bring the hammer down on schools they feel have mistreated their players during the recruiting process. Pesek-Hickson has now publicly stated his belief that he was mistreated by Michigan. Yet when Sims was asked if there will be any issues with Harbaugh recruiting Blue Valley North in the future, he shot down the notion without equivocation.

“Oh no, no, no, no,” Sims replied.

“As far as my feelings with Coach Harbaugh, he has always been upfront and honest with me. He has always done an awesome job every time he has come into my school. He is a great coach from my vantage point.”

“So, I think moving forward, I don’t see any issues that would ever keep Coach Harbaugh out of any one of my schools.”

Webb asserts that Michigan made it clear that a grayshirt was a possibility, and… I mean, when they don't sign you in December* what do you think that implies? Do you receive this news and think "this is fine"?

Michigan probably shouldn't have offered the kid but rather encouraged him to keep his options open past the early period. But also the father's story doesn't pass the sniff test.

*[Quinten Johnson did sign, FWIW, but it was kept quiet so his high school could do a signing day thing.]

2019 basketball recruiting isn't done. Michigan's setting up a visit with Lester Quinones, a 6'5" shooting guard:

Among the schools on him the hardest?

“Maryland, LSU, Michigan, Memphis, Georgia, Ohio State, Pitt, and Miami, been texting a lot.”

Visit plans?

“Michigan is the next visit. It’s getting planned, there is no exact date."

Quinones has a commitment timeline of "late spring," which should give Michigan enough time to determine whether they're suffering attrition, whether it's NBA or otherwise, and thus have a spot for him.

[After THE JUMP: Kansas crocodile tears, Nik Stauskas as an NBA badminton, wyd Tim Drevno]

Fairly proper sanctimony. Silvio De Sousa's been suspended for this year and next by the NCAA after his recruitment was one of the main events in the FBI investigation. This caused a great hue and cry since De Sousa is claimed to be an innocent doe in the woods with no knowledge that his services are being bought and sold. I dunno, maybe he was raised in a monastery and passed out the first time he saw a woman's ankle. It could be true.

Kansas is naturally throwing a fit.

Here is what coach Bill Self (2) said in a statement: “In my 30-plus years of coaching college basketball, I have never witnessed such a mean-spirited and vindictive punishment against a young man who did nothing wrong. To take away his opportunity to play college basketball is shameful and a failure of the NCAA. Silvio is a tremendous young man who absolutely deserves to be on the court with his teammates. This process took way too long to address these issues. We will support Silvio as he considers his options.”

And Pat Forde is appropriately calling them on their garbage (I apologize in advance for Forde capitalizing "Self-awareness"):

Here is what Bill Self should have said, if he had a lot less gall and a lot more Self-awareness: “I apologize to Silvio De Sousa for putting him in this predicament. I’m sorry that T.J. Gassnola (3), a known bag man and now convicted felon, who I was in contact with during this recruitment and others, paid the money that helped bring Silvio to Kansas. We have said that Silvio didn’t know what was transpiring, but I should have. Everyone in college basketball was aware of T.J.’s reputation and how he operated. I acknowledge that it’s very hard to believe that someone with my experience and connections had no idea that he was working a deal to abruptly pull Silvio away from Maryland and send him to Kansas. Instead of blaming the NCAA for its ruling, I should blame myself for using T.J. Gassnola as an unofficial recruiter.”

Here is what Kansas athletic director Jeff Long (4) should have said, instead of joining Self in railing against the NCAA: “Silvio De Sousa’s ineligibility rests with us, not the NCAA. As was revealed in federal court, our head coach said in a text message to T.J. Gassnola, who was working recruiting angles as an Adidas bag man, ‘I’m happy with Adidas. Just got to get a couple real guys.’ Well, T.J. got us a guy, and he did it with a cash payment. We let a fox in the hen house, then acted surprised when he ate a chicken. That’s on us, and nobody else.”

Here is what Kansas president Douglas Girod (5) should have said, if he’d bothered to say anything at all: “As the head of the university, I’m here to accept responsibility for what’s happened within our basketball program and not fall back on the tired, easy, blame-the-NCAA lamentation. Silvio De Sousa has been declared ineligible, and playing him last year will almost certainly vacate our 2018 Final Four appearance. Billy Preston (6) was recruited to Kansas and never played a minute after his mother also was paid by T.J. Gassnola. Cliff Alexander (7) was declared ineligible during the 2015 NCAA tournament and never played again for our school. Assistant coach Kurtis Townsend (8) was quoted on a wiretap transcript discussing a housing-job-cash deal to land Zion Williamson (9). We should have taken a hard look at the way Kansas basketball does business long before now — but frankly, we didn’t want to.”

What dim bulbs like Stephen Godfrey fail to realize in their lionization of the folks who cheat the system is that they benefit from the cartel just as much as the dudes with insanely inflated salaries sitting on top of it. De Sousa reportedly got 22,500—actually De Sousa reportedly got 0 dollars, if you believe Kansas—when in a system that dispensed with amateurism he would have been paid significantly more.

Runners and bagmen and agents aren't defying the system, they're working it.

Open the system up and apply whatever resources you have to academic fraud, oh and change your system from one that explicitly encourages UNC-like straight-up lying instead of what Mizzou did.

Jeff Long just disqualified himself from the Michigan AD job should it come open before he retires, BTW.

I'm in for the California Tiebreaker. Spencer discovers an insane, but brief overtime system:

The format of The California Tiebreaker is butt-simple. The ball starts on the fifty. The winner of the coin toss gets possession, and each team receives four plays to move the ball however they like in the direction of the other team’s endzone.

The weirdness kicks in here: Each team trades possessions, and works the ball from the spot where their opponent left it on the previous play. Complete a pass to the opponent’s 35 yard line on the first play? That’s where they play their first. Because this is a godly solution to football’s overtime problem, field goals and punts are not allowed. If no one scores or turns the ball over after four plays, then the victor is determined by field position.

Maybe they shouldn't do that immediately after regulation but that's certainly a way to cap the number of OTs.

One blarf, pending. Nik Stauskas's week:

• Traded from Portland to Cleveland
• Traded from Cleveland to Houston
• Traded from Houston to Indiana
• waived

If he gets picked up by the right team he'll be on his fifth NBA team in a week. Someone call Guinness.

In happier alum NBA news:

Coach on @CarisLeVert:

“He’s in. He’s in tomorrow.” pic.twitter.com/M98BbWL228

— Brooklyn Nets (@BrooklynNets) February 7, 2019

That's wonderful to hear after an injury that was at first feared to be much worse.

Breaking the cartel. There's a bill in the California State Senate that would put the NCAA at a crossroads if it became law:

Skinner, who represents the 9th Senate District, which encompasses the East Bay, will announce plans Tuesday to introduce a new bill that is called the Fair Pay to Play Act. It is designed to allow student-athletes at California colleges to be paid directly for the use of their name, image and likeness. It also would make it illegal for schools or any organization to restrict these rights or punish athletes for exercising them. …

The Fair Pay to Play Act is hoping to spark a movement that forces the hand of the NCAA, a private entity not bound by state laws. The athletes could still be ruled ineligible by the governing body of college sports. But the law seeks to create a standoff between California colleges and their athletes and the NCAA, presuming the NCAA would eventually have to acquiesce instead of, in essence, banning its California schools.

There would be lawsuits, no doubt, and what a way to spend the money you're not paying players: on endless lawsuits.

Pick your guy. Michigan continues to be super aggressive with walk-ons. This year they've got 20, give or take a kicker or guy who talks about a scholarship for this or next year. I'm rooting for Zonterio Weekley for obvious reasons.

One last fist-shake at Tim Drevno. What are you even doing?

Iowa sported the highest-graded pass-blocking offensive tackle this season in Alaric Jackson. pic.twitter.com/yW9RF1kLFO

— PFF College (@PFF_College) February 1, 2019

Michigan was going to get Jackson until they decided not to send him a letter of intent on Signing Day.

Etc.: UCLA did bad. Maybe OSU should have called this guy. New defensive analyst is former App St DC. Football is about average in returning production. Deandre Haynes profiled. RJ Hampton isn't happening.