re: Reality of Lyles situation

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The reality:
LSU paid the company that Willie Lyles worked for the going rate for him to not negatively affect the situation with certain kids he had influence with.

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eh I dunno, physically being in Baton Rouge with recruits? (who didnt sign obviously, but still)

something is sketchy, one way or another; hopefully it blows over

who cares. nothing will come out of this until next year which will give us plenty of time to win the n.c. this year.

like you said, its a grey area anyway (especially "booster" stuff) and I think thats a good thing for LSU.

If they wanted to bust us, theyd have done it already IMO.

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Yea. LSU invites Seastrunk for an unofficial (i.e. on Lache's nickel) visit to LSU but he can't afford it so he asks Lyles to help. Lyles "sells" LSU some useless DVDs for $6K to fund the trip and pays Lache's way.

Now how can the NCAA possible have a problem with that.

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Holy shite that's an unbelievable spin

Who cares if the money LSU spent on the film dvds was used to fund that trip anyways? He can do whatever the frick he wants with the money that he earned. Coaches taking players on a trip to LSU is not against NCAA rules.. it happens all the time.

If Lyles had refused to take players to schools that didn't buy his film/services then it would be a big deal.. he is also free to offer advice to his players on where they should play ball at.. there is nothing wrong with that either.

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we paid Lyles for his access to recruits and their families, not for some random collection of slightly useful and mostly useless video. if we were shelling out thousands for only videos we would have verified beforehand they were all legit and worth it

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well, no shite.....they all do it. thing is, we did it under the perfectly legal guise of purchasing film. whether they think it was BS or not, it was done to the letter of the NCAA law.

nothing will happen.

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Yea. LSU invites Seastrunk for an unofficial (i.e. on Lache's nickel) visit to LSU but he can't afford it so he asks Lyles to help. Lyles "sells" LSU some useless DVDs for $6K to fund the trip and pays Lache's way.

Now how can the NCAA possible have a problem with that.

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Well, the visit that Seastrunk was on with Lyles was before Lyles sent the videos or ever saw the $6,000. That being the case, there was no give or take between Lyles and LSU at the time of the visit.

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But, we are just talking about Lyles....understand there are probably 20+ big programs that pay for the same services, just not from Lyles. SO IF they try to say LSU was bad, they have to say everyone else was bad also

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Not that he should be given high levels of credibility - even Lyles has stated that LSU's compliance department asked him for a bunch of documentation on things, while Oregon did not.

The fact we did not land James or Seastrunk, and the NCAA does not, at present, believe Lyles influenced Randle to sign with LSU, appears to bolster our assertion we have relatively clean hands in the Lyles situation.

The downside is: now we're on the minds of the NCAA guys as they try to ascertain how close the ties are between Lyles and Haley. Right now, I think we're as close to squeaky clean as we possibly can be under the circumstances. Thankfully, this conduct won't be evaluted as being within our current probationary period.

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Well, the visit that Seastrunk was on with Lyles was before Lyles sent the videos or ever saw the $6,000. That being the case, there was no give or take between Lyles and LSU at the time of the visit.

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I hope this is right, but I can't see why the timing of the payment would matter.

I'm not saying this happened, but a cynical person (or the NCAA) could see it as a possibility.

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He lived in fricking Texas moron! Not in Alaska.

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So you're saying LSU overpaid? Lyles has to get his cut too you know.

Lighten up - I'm not saying this is what happened, but this or something like it is what a lot of the reporting seems to be driving at. In any event, I still believe LSU runs one of the cleanest programs in the country.

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So you are saying no college should pay for scouting services if one of those athletes plans on visiting with the service?

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I'm saying scouting service personnel having association or contact with specific recruits to the extent of taking them on requiting trips etc could be viewed as a conflict of interest with potential for corruption.

LSU would do well to steer clear of any such "scouts" - we don't need them!

My understanding of the situation is as follows:

LSU wanted video during the season of two JUCO players--Zach Mettenberger, who played at a JUCO in Kansas and Anthony Denham, a WR who played for a Los Angeles JUCO. Will Lyles had footage on both. However, as businesses are known to do to increase profits, to get access to the Mettenberger film, Lyles wanted LSU to buy the full Kansas JUCO package for $3,000 and to get footage on Denham, he required that LSU buy the full California JUCO package.

LSU did so, paying Lyles' company $6,000 for the combined packages. Will Lyles has no relationship with Zach Mettenberger and, to my knowledge, no relationship with Anthony Denham. And, as you know, Denham signed with Utah anyway.

Because these JUCO kids played in season, LSU could not send Frank Wilson or some other recruiter to go watch them. They needed video to evaluate. Lyles had it. Supply and demand. And while $6,000 for film on two kids sounds steep, it's really not.

The whole notion that some of the film Lyles sold was dated or low quality is pointless in light of the purpose for which LSU paid for the film. LSU bought the film to see footage of Denham and Mettenberger and they got that. Chances are, they did not even bother to watch half of the other crap Lyles included in the package.

So to premise a story based on footage that LSU didn't give a flying f*ck about is either lousy journalism (one would think that after developing the thesis the reporter would at least ask LSU for background to explain themselves) or tabloid journalism (OTL tired of being scooped by Yahoo and wanted a salicious college football recruiting story to occupy a slow sports news period).

Regardless, LSU is fine and did nothing wrong. This will pass over in a few weeks and LSU has already explained its purposes for the film purchase to the NCAA. Unless there is some other FACT that has yet to come to light, no revelation in that OTL story will lead to anything.