Its official, Akiem Hicks has left the Football team. LSU football: Defensive tackle Akiem Hicks leaving LSU | LSU Tigers Central - - NOLA.com
Ah yes, the Reveille article that disappeared so fast from the online version, if you blinked you missed it.
In the Dooley/Tennessee and Kiffen/USC threads here, I was talking to all these people convinced that no respectable coach would go to either USC or Tenn because the NCAA would sanction both of them.... USC for paying their players and Tenn for having hot girls recruit for them. I agreed that USC would get in big trouble for paying their players (all programs get in huge trouble for this) but disagreed that Tenn would get in trouble for the hot girls (both LSU and Texas got in the news last year regarding using hot girls to recruit, and nothing happened with that). But if LSU is paying players to come here, and the NCAA is investigating... that's much worse that what Tenn is going through, no?
It's hard to find rhyme or reason when it comes to NCAA violations. The Lester Earl incident showed that it does have a vindictive streak if they're out to get a program. But assuming the NCAA hasn't been snooping around the LSU program prior to this coming to light, it generally bodes better when a school self-reports violations and the NCAA doesn't have to look for itself. It also helps that McCarthy was fired almost immediately after LSU investigated the matter, so LSU can claim it was an isolated incident involving a rogue coach, and it becomes harder for the NCAA to hang the "lack of institutional control" that killed our men's basketball program in the late 90s. If that's all there is to the story, LSU should get off with a slap on the wrist and only lose a couple of schollies. I'm not sure what they would do to Tennessee unless there were serious allegations of wrongdoing on Kiffin's part, Coach Yaw-Yaw and convenience store armed robberies notwithstanding. USC is a different story IMO. They've maintained innocence even after the Reggie Bush issue came to light, and after being under investigation by the NCAA for over 5 years now. It also doesn't help their image that Reggie has basically stonewalled the investigation the entire time and settled out of court with other people involved. Combined with the O. J. Mayo fiasco I can easily see the NCAA dropping the hammer on USC for a pattern of conduct within their AD.
I agree that LSU is in the same boat as USC when it come to the seriousness of NCAA sanctions, while Tenn has nothing to worry about. I also agree that by firing the coach that allegedly did this to us (and booting the player he allegedly did this to) helps a great deal, instead of doing the whole "we didn't do anything wrong thing" that USC did and is still doing.
NCAA is not investigating LSU it is an internal investigation where we will send what we find. Maybe they decide to come in after that but it looks like Miles took control of the situation in a timely fashion and took McCarthy off the recruiting trail, got rid of him, and Hicks never stepped on the field. If Hicks would have played it would be a different situation.
