It’s Duck Hunting Season

Not knowing whether the brochure you hand out to a player is too specific and thus considered to be personally tailored towards an athlete is one thing.  But all of us agents know when we are clearly breaking the NCAA rule, which strictly prohibits the disbursement of any type of monetary benefit to a student-athlete.  Yet, somehow, violations continue.  As a profession, let’s cut this crap already.

The most recent case is out of the University of Oregon, where offensive tackle Fenuki Tupou was suspended for the first game of this season for receiving money and a free meal from Tim Norling of LMM Sports Management.  Lock, Metz and Malinovic cannot be too happy to see their company’s name making headlines for this nonsense.

Norling denies that he paid for the meal or gave Tupou any additional money.  My only question then is why would Tupou make such a big deal over $30 ($10 for the meal, $20 in cash handed over afterwards)?  I would not think that he has any personal vendetta against Norling, and even if he did, would he not care about missing the first game of his important senior season based on a lie?  Tupuo self-reported the violation, which probably would have never been dug up by Oregon, the NCAA, or the NFLPA.