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Glad we weren't recruiting this guy...pretty crazy story out of Tennessee. I feel bad for the team other than the scammer. A very tough ending for a team whose assistant coach died during the season.
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this is actually the 3rd such example uncovered in the past year or so...
and one has to wonder if it is actually happening elsewhere but the charade hasn't been discovered....
In each of these cases - it was only uncovered because of a fluke that the guy got recognized because of a quirk - and NOT because the actual school did their proper review of the kid's background and history..
..all these multi-transfer kids have their trails so well hidden that it takes a little effort to find the truth......
What I believe drives this - is first the HUGE potential for CASH gain if the kid really is a recruitable athlete...they can strike it rich like Anthony Davis or Shabazz Muhammad...
Then there's the EASE with which you can readily fool the school administration - look how many times it's happened...
Mac Koshwal & several others also did it in Chicago despite almost endless complaints from thousands of people who knew he was overage and lying about it - yet the Chicago Public Schools ignored all that until someone else hired a private investigation firm to locate the school records of Koshwal & Thijin Moses from a Canadian middle school showing he was already at least 16 years old when he graduated from 7th grade, and that he had entered a Canadian high school some five years earlier and has thus already exhausted his HS-eligibility.
In defense of themselves - both the school AND the Chicago Public Leage said this...
"There are conflicting academic records.. the records presented to Julian in the fall of 2003 when Koshwal enrolled,
there was no indication of him attending a previous high school. ...we had no reason to look for any high school records."
..so they didn't bother to look at the kid's prior records - even though it was readily apparent he had graduated middle school THREE YEARS EARLIER!!! Heck - like I said - every athlete at my kids' school who transfers in gets their past records scrutinized with a microscope!
Even many "experts" like the recruiting gurus, IL prep guys, etc. were caught off guard and were fooled...
Then there's the same situation with the Little League scandal of Danny Almonte - who Little League ONLY caught on when Sports Illustrated went down to Puerto Rico and dug out the kid's actual birth certificate showing everything else was fraudulent.
If the proper authorities did their true home work - and were as careful as they are about kicking some poor kid out of school because he never got his last tetanus booster - then they ought to be able to catch these overage frauds!!
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