Why Recruiting Violations Aren't Caught

I believe it was in his Book "Bo" talking about the job at Texas A&M and illegal recruiting. He discusses that he felt like if a kid did well the booster would want to make sure everyone knew about how he was responsible for getting that kid to go to school there. If the kid sucks, the booster won't stop complaining to everyone who will listen that he paid $10K for that bum who does nothing but screw up. 

Granted I largely agree with your premise, but do think that people talk about it. I just don't think the NCAA can do anything about it due to their overall lack of power. 

Given the incentive structure you laid out, why wouldn't cheating be rampant? Isn't that a pretty weird belief?

Also: there's another party to add to the interested in seeing Phil and friends get busted. Namely, any non-cheating rivals have a very significant incentive to at least work through back channels in bringing this kind of thing to light. But I imagine they would have to be extremely secretive because there's very likely a lot of anti-snitching codes in place throughout the game. ADs are hamstrung by this, but boosters probably could devote some time/money to it. It doesn't have to be just Yahoo that funds Charles Robinson.

You touched on another way: taxes. The NCAA can play detective, but they can't subpeona anyone, can't make anyone talk under oath, make arrests, or anything. As you said, the NCAA needs cooperation.

The police/feds/government don't though. They have the power to subpeona, and the reason they would would be tax money. Just ask CWebb. However like the hometown papers, the government probably has better things to go after than a few thousand dollar gifts here or there.

/please let that be the end of the politics talk?

Phil was overrated anyway. Terrible pad level. BILL FTW!!!

FU's home paper is definitely out. Papers struggle for readers as it is, they don't need to anger their subscriber base by getting FU in a bunch of trouble.      Local Paper = Freep (another example is they could do a 1/2 ass job in the investigation and draw a bunch of bad conclusions that lead to FU spending millions of dollars to defend themselves against a few hours of extra practice time).

First off, I'm in no way offended by your response Diary and appreciate how you handled it.  This is the type of discussion I wanted to generate.  Your response took the approach of "why isn't it caught" as opposed to "are they cheating" but I think that's a topic worth discussing too.

With regard to what you had to say, I agree with many of your points.  The problem with catching people is a lack of whistle blowers, a lack of cops on the ground, and a lack of enforcement power.  Unless there's a reason to engage the government, the NCAA is pretty impotent in these matters. 

To clear up one thing, you mentioned USC as a casual example.  That didn't jump out to me because they have obvious things to offer potential recruits and thus there is a logical explanation you can go to for their success......whether they are cheating or not.  Ole Miss lacks that obvious reason on the surface.  (The connection some of the 5-stars had with existing players may be the hidden answer.) 

Getting back to the OP, I still think there are other potential sources of the story that I'm surprised we haven't seen more of:

• A fired staff member or administrator from the AD.
• A player who's scholarship wasn't honored for some reason (though these players might not be the ones getting the $$).
• A jealous girlfriend.
• A car accident involving that Maserati

Better yet, let's say your recruit Phil decided to attend FU for clean reasons but LU really wanted him and kept offering him illegal bribes to attend (girls, money, cars, etc.).  Why wouldn't someone like Phil talk and throw LU under the bus?  He has the chance to destroy a rival school in the process of showing how honest he was during his recruitment.  Maybe he even does this after he graduates college. 

To me the better source would be a credible author who follows around a few recruits during this process and gets all of the information first hand as soon as they get back.  It would take the right recruit who was willing to talk about it without risking his own eligibility. 

How about jaded teammate that feels he's better than "Phil" but isn't feeling the love from boosters, alumni, etc?

This is what's going to bring ND and Teo down eventually IMO.

I don't see why Phil's hometown newspaper wouldn't want to do some digging and run hard with this story. You state as a given that they are struggling and thus preoccupied with "crime, serious corruption, or serious societal issues".  Isn't this something that could land them on the front page of ESPN, CNN and the like?  Everyone would be racing to the newsstand.  There is no way people in that town don't know what happened.

The HS and college coaches might be (in many cases, willfully) out of the loop.  Willfull ignorance would seem to be a tempting choice for most coaches. They may see smoke billowing out from one direction but not look too closely and just turn their head so they can say they never saw any fire.

We are going about this the wrong way.  We keep speculating on recruiting violations, which does not get us anywhere.