Recruiting Violations for Oregon Ducks
About a year ago the NCAA started their investigation after highly touted Texas high school running back Lache Seastrunk signed his letter of commit to attend the school. Seastrunk committed to the Oregon Ducks over schools like USC, California and LSU. Seastrunk only stayed at Oregon one year and now is attending Baylor. He never played a regular season game for the team.
The man at the center of the investigation is Willie Lyles. Lyles was paid $25,000 by the school for his recruiting services with the belief that he led Seastrunk to Oregon. Lyles also had a relationship with another Texas recruit and Oregon Duck, LaMichael James.
Fast forward a year and the NCAA is alleging Oregon violated the way they have been using recruiting services the past four years. The NCAA documents started to leak out this past Monday (February 27th) although the University does not acknowledge the violations. The issue at hand seems to be with the use of three scouting services and that the school exceeded the number of coaches allowed for recruiting. The NCAA has not commented on the ongoing investigation.
There have been no rumblings on what type of punishment(s) could come against the school so far. It could be conceived as a good sign that coach Chip Kelly came back to the school after flirting with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. If anything he doesn’t appear to be in the mold of former USC Trojan leader, Pete Carroll, who left the school in the middle of major NCAA violations.
It’s been an interesting year in Eugene amid the investigation. The team opened its season with a tough loss against eventual co-championship game opponent LSU but rebounded to win the Pac 12 with a blowout victory of UCLA. The team also saw the emergence of freshmen sensation DeAnthony Thomas and the dismissal in early December of talented but troubled defensive back, Cliff Harris. The season ended with an exciting victory in the Rose Bowl over a tough Wisconsin team in early January.
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Editor’s note: I would like to welcome new staff writer Raymond Mencke Jr. to the site, and I hope you enjoyed his debut post.