I'm confused. Why are we throwing Skip under the bus when it is LSU that is uncovering all of this. Wasn't it the LSU police that arrested the guy a couple of weeks ago for trying to contact athletes. Now they further investigate and found this guy implanted. How is this a bad thing for the administration. Isn't it possible that they didn't know he was in on this when they hired him? It reminds me of when N.O. started getting harder on crime in the city. Everyone see's this stuff on T.V. and they assume that crime is getting worse when in fact the NOPD was just doing a better job of catching it and reporting the numbers. This may look bad on LSU in the short term but I think it is a good thing that it didn't go any further. Imagine if this guy had stayed around for a few years.
It's my understanding that state law requires sports agents to be registered or licensed (not sure which) in the state of Louisiana before they can conduct business. Much like many other trades that must be registered and/or licensed. The guy arrested a week ago was not registered/licensed as a sports agent.
It sounds like LSU is doing the right thing and it will only help in the long run but when you find dirt it's not a good thing. No matter who finds it it looks bad and could come with penalties. Lets hope it is no big deal and that everyone involved is indeed doing the right thing.
This all started on October 13th when LSU campus police picked up Charles Taplin. Here's the original article dated October 15th from The Advocate:
man that's pretty f#$%ed up. Anyone know the max sentence? I think if we give a couple of these goons the needle or send them to Angola for a couple years they'd quit messing with college athletes in Louisiana.
Thats right, the agent has to registar with the state fisrt, then the university, and then ask permission from AD before talking to any student-athletes. This law was made more specific 7 years ago. Just heard that Skip hired a former NCAA committee member a while back. Bertman is a smart man to do so, this guy can make everything run smoother when these kind of incidents occur. I dont think we have much to worry about.
I'm not throwing Skip under the bus. He's done enough work in that area on his own. My earlier post stated how great a job that our compliance dept does. I was just responding to SFs question about my logic. I think some of the other posters cleared up about how it is a good thing that this guy was caught and that the system in place is working to root out the bad eggs. If its true that the student-athletes are the ones who reported the offense, then the compliance dept has done its job of educating the student-athletes about the rules regarding agents.
