Where's The Fire?

Apparently there isn't going to be much fire coming from Knoxville. Bruce Pearl admitted giving "misleading and incorrect information" (i.e. "lying") to the NCAA during their investigation of the Tennessee basketball program, and as a result his bosses slapped him with a punishment so the NCAA would get off their backs. Pearl will have to forfeit $1.5 million in salary over the next five years and cannot recruit off-campus for a year. And if you look really closely, you can see the marks where the ruler hit his knuckles.

So let me see if I've got this straight - 21 years ago, Pearl lied to the NCAA investigators about Deon Thomas. Now, he lies to the NCAA investigators about his own program. And yet people come rushing out to defend him. I especially love this quote from the cited ESPN article:

"Pearl recorded Thomas, who by then has committed to Illinois, admitting that he had received a car from an Illinois assistant and turned the tape over to the NCAA. Though the NCAA never was able to back up Pearl's claim, the subsequent investigation revealed other ridiculously minor violations and Illinois was handed a one-year postseason ban because the NCAA would have looked foolish if they had investigated Illinois for a year and not punished them in some way."

(Italics mine. Oh, and some of the other quoted material may represent my interpretations of these events.)

In other words, Pearl's allegations were completely bogus, but he's still a good guy because he was a "whistleblower". Don't get me wrong - I think whistleblowers provide a great service to society, but only if they're telling the truth. If you're a lying whistleblower, it kind of defeats the purpose.

Remember how Kelvin Sampson took Oklahoma to the Final Four? No, you don't, because now when you think of him you think of how he drove the Indiana basketball program off a cliff with his illegal and unethical behavior. So let's hope that even if this is Pearl's only actual punishment, the incident helps change the perception of Bruce Pearl from wronged man to wrongdoer. After twenty-plus years of waiting for vengeance, that would still be pretty sweet.

There's Smoke. Now Let's See Some Fire.

Oh, please, let this be true! According to ESPN's report of a potential investigation into Bruce Pearl's Tennessee basketball program:

With its football program already under an NCAA probe, the University of Tennessee is facing an investigation into its men's basketball program.

NCAA representatives are checking, in part, excessive telephone calls and the use of unauthorized phones to contact recruits, sources told ESPN.com Thursday.

It would be perfect retribution if Bruce Pearl would get into hot water with the NCAA over telephone calls, considering that his illegal recording of a phone conversation with Illini recruit Deon Thomas helped set the Illini basketball program back for a decade and unfairly tarnished the reputations of Jimmy Collins and Lou Henson (this may be a reason why Henson has not yet been inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame). Let's hope there's something to this story.