Dave Sez

Texas Play-Em

Texas basketball has a freshman named Mike Williams who was rated among the top 20 recruits in the country last year. Unfortunately, he apparently took some illegal benefits from his AAU coach (who didn't?) and is being held out by the NCAA. The Longhorns think the NCAA is taking too damn long to deliver a final ruling on the case. Williams claims that he already repaid his coach (in cash, so there's no evidence one way or the other).

So Texas took the extremely unusual step of having >their own hearing

It's a pretty ballsy step for UT to take. On one hand, I like that they are basically putting the NCAA's feet to the fire, but on the other hand you can't set a precedent where schools make all the decisions about their own athletes. Too many schools have shown that they just can't be trusted.

If the UT faculty decide that Williams can play and he does and the NCAA later declares him inelligible, the Longhorns will probably have to forfeit those games. It's quite a gamble.