Tiny Gallon (Sort Of) Explains $3,000 Loan

Last Friday Brian Cook spent some time talking about the implications of the latest developments regarding Tiny Gallon, the Oklahoma Sooners and potential NCAA penalties. Today, there’s an explanation from Gallon about a $3,000 wire transfer, but is it one that will satisfy skeptics? Here’s what Gallon had to say to ZagsBlog.com:↵↵⇥“Oak Hill wouldn’t release my transcript under no circumstances and my mother had to do what she had to do,” Gallon said Thursday following a workout with the Knicks at their training facility.↵⇥↵⇥“It wasn’t an agent, it was a financial adviser. She got the money from him, got my transcript out of Oak Hill Academy. I got a single mother. When she got the money, she paid the financial adviser back through my freshmen year.”↵⇥

↵↵↵First, I admittedly had no idea these guys were paying tuition to go somewhere like Oak Hill. You’d think there’d be scholarships of some sort, but that evidently wasn’t the case. ↵

↵↵Second, let’s say the motive for getting the cash was on the up-and-up. What that doesn’t explain is the 41 phone calls and 25 text messages between ex-Sooners assistant Oronde Taliaferro and this financial adviser, Jeffrey Hausinger. The way Gallon makes it sound in his statement, this was no different than just going to the bank and asking for a loan, but clearly a third party -- Taliaferro -- was in the loop. What they discussed could’ve been anything, but it would be naïve to not think there was some discussion about getting money to Gallon so he could pay his bills at Oak Hill and become eligible for the Sooners. If the adviser was indeed paid back for the loan and the Gallon family can prove that, it would be tough to make much of a case for wrongdoing.↵

↵↵Given the pace the NCAA is dealing with USC, we should see some action at Oklahoma in 2018 or so.↵

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