January 29th, 2013 at 3:01 PM ^
1/2 were pissed at how our coaches "could be so stupid"...then the rest of us all knew what was going on.
It happens all over the country, in more ways than people realize. In the end, not a big deal and probably not the only kid THIS YEAR that we lost due to "other" circumstances.
I've worked in college athletics for quite some time, there's only so much you can do. Just yesterday, I heard a story about a dad pimping out his own daughter who was on the welcome team (they've got all kinds of names for the group and literally every school has them)...giving her money to give to recruits, take them out, do whatever. School had no knowledge, just some crazy, rich, fan that thought he was helping his team.
We have crazy freakouts on MGoBlog all the time, can you imagine what that's like at the "MGoBlog of Ole Miss?"
Fact is, you can't control an entire fan base. If people want to cheat, they're going to cheat. The bigger issue is making sure coaches aren't involved and student-athletes are educated.
For every athlete that takes money, there are probably 10 more than turn down handouts. Hell, I remember when I was in college. Me and my best friend who played football at OSU walked back to his dorm...at the door was a box. Inside...a Rolex. He had no idea where it came from, it didn't even say anything other than "Go Bucks" on it.
Another friend who was at MSU had someone give him an envelop with $400 in it. Neither guy kept the gift or knew where it came from. Neither guy got another gift to my knowledge...but I don't think in either case anyone associated with the University knew about it until they turned them in.
January 29th, 2013 at 3:50 PM ^
January 29th, 2013 at 2:46 PM ^
Did no one notice the Combat Source Kill aka: roach motel at the bottom of the pic? Ole Miss were all the 5* go! HAHAHA.
January 29th, 2013 at 2:46 PM ^
Had to breakout the red/blue "rebel" glasses for this!
...first he's flashing more money than any high school should ever have.
...then some floozy is talking about topping him off (that's what the kids call it these days, just learned that yesterday actually) in the library.
#jealousnow #laughinglater
January 29th, 2013 at 2:57 PM ^
I'm just sayin' - Chris Hansen, Dateline NBC, a recruiting sting. Would make for fascinating TV.
January 29th, 2013 at 5:07 PM ^
January 29th, 2013 at 3:00 PM ^
January 29th, 2013 at 3:01 PM ^
looks like Ole Miss is gonna get 5* Nkemdiche. they have 5* laremy tunsil visiting this weekend as well.
January 29th, 2013 at 4:46 PM ^
January 29th, 2013 at 3:09 PM ^
What an idiot
January 29th, 2013 at 3:11 PM ^
here we go
January 29th, 2013 at 3:20 PM ^
This is not shocking in the least. Treadwell may be a great kid, and I don't know anything about him or his motivations. But that said, it is INCREDIBLY rare for a blue-chip recruit to pick a school that has no recent history of success and is not reasonably close to home.
Ole Miss has one 10-win season since 1972, and their coach, Hugh Freeze, has only been a HC for two years (at Ole Miss for one). So it's not like he's signing up for a program that will be competing for championships.
Take a look at the Rivals 100 for each of the last few years: 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010. The only kids on those lists who signed with programs that had not either experienced significant recent success or were local were Yuri Wright (2012 4*, high school in NJ to the University of Colorado), Gabriel Marks (2012 4*, Los Angeles to Washington St.), and James Hurst (2010 4*, Indiana to UNC). The only one of those ranked higher than #85 in the country was Hurst, an OL ranked #32. There is literally no instance in the last four years in which a blue-chip player signed with a mid-level program out of his region.
So we have a situation where a kid from Illinois just signed with a middling school nine hours from home, and started flashing cash around. Not only that, but Ole Miss is by many accounts the leader for Robert Nkemdiche, the #1 overall recruit in this class, who is from Georgia - not quite as far, but still not exactly local, which also seems fishy. Again, I don't know anything about Treadwell as a person, or his motivations, and this certainly is not clear proof of any impropriety. But there sure is a lot of smoke in this case for there to be no fire behind it.
January 29th, 2013 at 6:42 PM ^
I believe Nkemdiche's brother plays for Ole Miss currently and Ole Miss pulling a guy from Georgia is basically like us pulling a guy from Pennsylvania
Second, Anthony Standifer goes to Ole Miss who I believe is one of Laquon's best friends.
Given those points, it's still suspicious for the biggest sad sack in the SEC to be pulling guys in like that but there are definitely plausible reasons for them to pull in those two
January 29th, 2013 at 3:21 PM ^
January 29th, 2013 at 3:27 PM ^
the SEC is the premiere conference in college football right now and they can offer immediate playing time. think about what beating alabama did for johnny manziel, a freshman last year, you would not have many opportunities to do that in the B1G or anywhere else.
January 29th, 2013 at 3:31 PM ^
January 29th, 2013 at 3:36 PM ^
2. Michigan broke ties with Treadwell and complained about it.
3. Ole Miss is getting highly touted visitors.
I've concluded that Michigan was asked to pony up and refused to get in bed with Treadwell. After several attempts by Treadwell to shop his talents around to other schools Ole Miss came thru. Just my opinion but I think it's more Treadwell wanting assistance and not caring where he plays. Word spreads then all those who are like Treadwell start showing up on Ole Miss' front door. IMO.
January 29th, 2013 at 3:53 PM ^
Obviously if a black kid has money, he must have gotten it from a booster, right? That or by selling drugs I guess.
This place is gross sometimes.
January 29th, 2013 at 4:25 PM ^
January 30th, 2013 at 7:58 AM ^
Look, I'll admit this is a dumb thing for him to do at this time of year, but I think it's equally dumb to pretend that there isn't a racial component to how these kinds of stories are portrayed. I don't really understand the "flash your cash" thing that these kids today are doing, but it's apparently a thing.
When I was 17 I had a bank account with money in it. I got that money from, you know, working. I can't remember how much I had but I'm sure it was more than is pictured there. Also, I bet if I had wanted to, I could have gone to a bank to get cash and laid it on my dining room table and taken a picture. The picture doesn't mean anything.
All we've got is conjecture about how you think Ole Miss should be recruiting accompanied by a picture of probably not very much money and a whole bunch of people on this thread are jumping to the conclusion, "Oh, this is why he went to a school that isn't my school. $EC hurr durr."
January 29th, 2013 at 5:25 PM ^
You have much more patience with asshats than I do.
January 29th, 2013 at 4:33 PM ^
January 29th, 2013 at 4:41 PM ^
January 29th, 2013 at 5:03 PM ^
Negged for bringing race into this. ~100 comments in, and yours is the first to bring up race. Top reasons for why this pic raised a red flag in just about everybody's minds:
- Recruiting has been known to be less than virtuous over the years, especially in the south/southeast.
- A year ago, Treadwell seemed like a heavy Michigan lean. For whatever reason, he decided to go to Ole Miss, a mediocre school in the south. I'm sure many people wondered (and some may have commented, I don't know) if there were some shady dealings. However, we have had no real reason to think that he was under-handedly lured to Ole Miss - despite being a mediocre football school, their campus is beautiful (by all accounts), they do have a long (albeit rough) history, his best friend just finished his freshman season there, and their coach is known to be a good, enthusiastic recruiter.
- He claimed that Michigan coaches weren't "showing him the love." From TomVH, we know the coaches didn't cut off communication with him, so they must not have been giving him what he was looking for.
- A week before NSD, he posts a picture on his Twitter account with a handful of money, then quickly deletes it. There are obviously many ways he could have gotten that money, and we have no proof that he got that money from a booster (we don't even have proof that that was his hand in the pic), and it's possible he removed a perfectly legitimate picture of money to avoid speculation.
All of that adds up to raise some question marks, and none of that has to do with race.
January 29th, 2013 at 5:36 PM ^
How dare you rationalize both sides of this argument? How am I supposed to get unreasonably angry about things like this?!
January 29th, 2013 at 5:47 PM ^
January 29th, 2013 at 8:07 PM ^
My point is that there is a tendency on the part of the predominantly white, predominantly middle class consumers of college football to look at the admittedly odd subcultural phenomenon of African American kids posing with fistfuls of cash and thinking that they must have gotten that money from some shady source, when in reality the amount of money getting flashed is nothing in most cases.
If Shane Morris tweeted a picture of a deposit slip from depositing $500 cash into an 18 month CD the week after a visit, I doubt many people here would be so scandalized. Unless, of course, they thought that he'd be better served by preserving the liquidity available through a traditional savings account.
January 29th, 2013 at 11:39 PM ^
the first time around, rather than call everyone a racist, maybe your point would have been better received.
January 30th, 2013 at 7:57 AM ^
My first post was probably overly inflammatory.
But I was irritated that I'd read through 100 or so posts with very few people pointing out that the amount of money showing is not anything out of the ordinary for a kid with a high school job to have. I thought it was shameful that there isn't any evidence whatsoever that the kid did anything wrong, yet people are just assuming that he's done something wrong.
Apparently people disagree with me, which is fine I guess, but you'd be hard pressed to convince me that the reaction when pictures like this come out isn't partially conditioned by the race of the kids posing with the cash. I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt it.
Racism comes in a lot of forms and degrees. Almost no one actually thinks that they're a racist, yet discrimination occurs all the time. See here for just one example. I'm sure most of the people in HR departments reviewing applications aren't members of the KKK, but the results are what they are.
Everyone wants to believe the best about himself. It's like those studies that show that 90% of people think they're smarter than average.
January 29th, 2013 at 11:53 PM ^
Actually they would. Do not forget that people were question how Johnny Manziel (who is as pasty and white as they come) was able to get floor seats at Mavs games, flash hundreds at casinos, and go the the national champioship game. And Manziel's family has got tons of oil money, and yet people still speculated on where he got the money.
Throwing the racism card where none exists only serves to lessen the impact of it where there actually is racism present. (Kinda like the boy who cried wolf)
January 30th, 2013 at 8:08 AM ^
I hope so. I'd like to think people are just idiots rather than racists.
January 29th, 2013 at 4:15 PM ^
The weirdest thing to me about Treadwell to Ole Miss is not that a kid would go to a certain school based on that. It's that either Ole Miss had the most to offer among all schools that have something to offer or that there were certain schools that were atttractive to him and yet Ole Miss was the most attractive choice among the group of schools that met his criterion.
January 29th, 2013 at 4:38 PM ^
January 29th, 2013 at 4:50 PM ^
January 29th, 2013 at 5:00 PM ^
Is 8.25 I think, a bi weekly check from a part time job is reasonably close to that. I'm not saying he has a part time job or what he makes or where it came from. It's not a large sum of money. The main point is that this is sour grapes over a kid who chose to go somewhere besides Michigan.
January 29th, 2013 at 5:11 PM ^
January 30th, 2013 at 2:44 AM ^
That looks very much like a decent sized stack of $100 bills on the table. I don't even make that much at my shitty part time job with a bi weekly paycheck.
Granted, it may be a friend/relatives money and he was just fucking around and taking pictures. It may be his personal savings. It may also be money taken from a blank envelope handed to him by an Ole Miss booster.
Either way, none of this really matters because the NCAA doesn't do anything about violations until Deadspin or Yahoo! decides that there may be a possible link to uncover, which there may or may not be.
January 29th, 2013 at 7:01 PM ^
January 29th, 2013 at 5:09 PM ^
The SEC is keeping their recruits by paying them? The NCAA would be all over that if it were true!
/s
January 29th, 2013 at 5:16 PM ^
January 29th, 2013 at 5:20 PM ^
I try to use an approach that makes me look at it from the other side. He's 17 or 18 years old. I had a job at that age where I made about $1,000 every two weeks. I also lived at home so I had no bills. So on pay day it wasnt very difficult to flash around hundreds. I didn't do it, but Im also not from a generation that was raised to idolize a culture where that is considered cool.
January 29th, 2013 at 6:19 PM ^
Now if only I had money so I could get a picture flaunting said money to let all the bitches know I'm a baller.
January 29th, 2013 at 6:41 PM ^
"Oxford Town in the afternoon
Ev'rybody singin' a sorrowful tune
Two men died 'neath the Mississippi moon
Somebody better investigate soon."
January 29th, 2013 at 7:09 PM ^
January 29th, 2013 at 10:59 PM ^
In the words of the greatest WR to every play football....
Straight cash homie
January 30th, 2013 at 12:43 AM ^
Kid didn't come to Michigan. They obviously paid him....or maybe he stole some kid's computer and sold it.