Less than four weeks before the start of the 2010 season, it’s uncertain whether or not All-American candidate Marvin Austin will suit up in a North Carolina uniform for a regular-season game. After the latest investigative report from Yahoo! Sports, the uncertainty swirling around the defensive tackle is growing.
According to writers Charles Robinson and Bryan Fischer, and citing three sources close to an investigation into the Tar Heels football program, NCAA investigators have focused their attention on UNC assistant coach John Blake and his relationship with agent and long-time friend Gary Wichard.
The tentacles of the probe that began at North Carolina has subsequently spread to South Carolina, Alabama, Pittsburgh and Georgia. A total of nine schools -- including Florida, Clemson and East Carolina -- have seen NCAA investigators on their campuses since June for a variety of reasons.
As for the UNC portion of the investigation, Wichard, as expected, has denied any impropriety between he and Blake. In fact, Wichard hopes that the sole issue the NCAA has with Austin is his relationship with Blake.
“If the center of this controversy is my relationship with John, there’s really no controversy,” Wichard said. “If that’s what [the NCAA] is investigating, I think it’s just absurd. ... I hope - I really, truly hope - that Marvin Austin’s whole case is based on me and John Blake. I hope that for Marvin Austin’s sake. At the end of the day, there’s nothing to investigate.”
Later on in the outstanding piece by Robinson and Fischer, there’s an interesting -- and, on the surface, damning -- exchange that takes place between the writers and Wichard.
Wichard was asked if Blake, the former Oklahoma head coach who met the agent in 1985, had ever been a Pro Tect employee. Wichard left no gray area in his response, telling Yahoo! in no uncertain terms that “no, no, no, no... He hasn’t worked for me at all.”
When informed that Yahoo! had a Pro Tect brochure listing Blake as “Vice President/Football Operations”, Wichard likely pulled a hammy as he quickly flipped the switch to full spin mode.
“The brochure is [from] like 1997 or whatever,” Wichard said. “He was on the brochure for whatever, dealing with football-related situations. But it has nothing to do with anything. He was not working as a coach at that time. The relevance to me is ridiculous. ... It doesn’t prove a thing. It’s absolutely meaningless.”
(If it was so meaningless and irrelevant, why lie when asked about it the first time?)
A couple other key points have been gleaned from the article. First, Wichard stated that he has not spoken to the NCAA regarding the investigation. Secondly, Wichard once again stated he has only spoken to Austin on one occasion, and that was to tell the then-junior to remain in school and not enter this past April’s NFL draft.
If the story as a whole is as Wichard has painted it, there are likely no worries on Austin’s end.
If, which seems more realistic, it’s not? North Carolina will have a decision to make -- if the NCAA hasn’t issued any rulings or given any indications by then -- before they pop the top on the 2010 season: go ahead and play Austin, knowing full well that there’s a chance he could be ruled retroactively ineligible. Or, sit one of their best players on either side of the ball given the fact that he could be declared retroactively ineligible.
Either way, this seems to be a situation that is not going away at any point in the near future.