NCAA president offers strong words on Enes Kanter
When newly appointed
NCAA president Mark Emmert addressed the non-decision handed down in the Cam Newton case, he expressed ambivalence about what his association had done -- as if he knew the NCAA had no other choice but he still wasn't happy about it. There was, however, no such equivocation when I talked to Emmert on Sunday about Kentucky freshman Enes Kanter. Although the NCAA president has no involvement in the enforcement process, Emmert gave a full-throated defense of his staff's decision to declare Kanter permanently ineligible for accepting more than $33,000 above necessary expenses from the pro team he played for in his native Turkey. That decision was upheld by an appeals committee last Friday.
"The facts are utterly unambiguous, the rule is utterly unambiguous, and the intention of the membership is utterly unambiguous," Emmert said. "The vast majority of people in collegiate basketball knew that this was an issue with Enes Kanter. Kentucky knew it. Everybody who talked with him knew it. So I'm amazed that people are shocked by the fact that he is ineligible."
The main criticism being lobbed at the NCAA these days is that its enforcement decisions have been inconsistent, to put it mildly. Kansas guard Josh Selby and Mississippi State forward Renardo Sidney were also found to have accepted impermissible benefits, yet both were allowed to play after serving a suspension and repaying the loot. On the flip side, Auburn quarterback Cam Newton got off scot free even though his father was caught trying to pimp his son. The biggest travesty of all was the amnesty granted to five Ohio State football players to play in the Sugar Bowl before beginning their five-game suspensions next season.
Emmert didn't disagree with my suggestion that the penalties have been inconsistent, but he said there was good reason for that. "They are all very different cases with very different facts," he said. "You mentioned Selby. Here was an individual who took somewhere over $5,000 worth of impermissible benefits. It wasn't from a professional team. It was from a third party. That wasn't a violation of our rules regarding professional athletics."
I also asked Emmert about the important question of intent. Kanter turned down far more money, perhaps in the millions, to try to come to the States to play college basketball. Unlike Newton's dad, who clearly tried to cash in on his son's talents, Kanter's family appears to have made a good-faith effort to keep him eligible. "I can't describe what a good-faith effort is," Emmet replied. "I don't know the young man or his family. If their intention all along was to have him come play in the United States, then it would simply have been a matter of not accepting pay. We've seen a threefold increase in the number of international athletes coming to college, so it's not right to say the environment is not conducive for them to come here and play. They simply have to not do it for money."
Finally, I asked Emmert about the very serious allegation made by Dick Vitale during ESPN's telecast of the UConn-Texas game Saturday. Vitale asserted that the reason Kanter was made permanently ineligible -- as opposed to temporarily suspended and forced to return the money -- was because he plays at Kentucky for the NCAA's nemesis, John Calipari. Vitale made this claim despite the fact that last season, the NCAA suspended Kentucky point guard John Wall for just two games for receiving impermissible benefits, similar to what it did with Selby. After the game, Vitale wrote on Twitter that he believed if Kanter were playing at Washington instead of Kentucky, he would not have been declared permanently ineligible.
Some background. Kanter turned down lucrative offers from teams in Turkey and Greece because he wanted to play high school and college ball in the United States. But when Kanter came here in 2009, two top prep schools turned him down because of concerns about his quasi-pro experience. He eventually enrolled at Stoneridge Prep in Simi Valley, Calif., and
in November he (Kanter) verbally committed to the University of Washington. On the day he committed, the president at the University of Washington was a man named Mark Emmert.
What happened from there is a matter of some debate. It has been widely reported that to Washington's chagrin, Kanter de-committed last February, re-opened his recruitment and two months later signed with Kentucky. When I asked Emmert why Washington recruited Kanter, he told me that as university president he did not get involved with basketball recruiting and thus did not know his coach's thinking. My own sources have indicated to me that the Washington coaching staff originally believed Kanter would have to miss some time but could retain his eligibility. But the more information they received on Kanter following his commitment, the more the Washington coaches realized it was unlikely he would ever be eligible. Kanter never visited the Washington campus and never applied for admission. He also never contacted Lorenzo Romar to tell him he was de-committing. The two just quietly went their separate ways.
Would Washington have rolled the dice like Kentucky did if Kanter wanted to come? Possibly. They would have had nothing to lose, right? Still, the fact is, Washington, like everyone else who was involved with Kanter, believed he would never clear the NCAA's amateurism hurdle. That's why Romar eventually backed off.
To suggest that Kanter would have been eligible had he gone to the NCAA president's former school is to give full embrace to conspiracy theory. I'm sure it will not shock you to hear that Emmert scoffed at Vitale's allegation. "Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's ridiculous," he said. "By all accounts this is a very talented basketball player, but yet there were very few schools recruiting him. Why was that? Because everyone understood that there was a very large probability that he was not going to be deemed eligible. This has nothing to do with Kentucky or Coach Calipari. It has to do with a clear rule and a clear set of facts."
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