College Football

The NCAA Would Like To See Your Text Messages, Please

Dec 3, 2010, 2:54 PM UTC

Since the NCAA slammed large heavy things over the head of USC earlier this year in the Reggie Bush case, it has been a point of policy for the NCAA to be more aggressive in enforcing the line between amateur and professional athletics and investigating possible violations. (This may or may not apply to the Cam Newton case, and it therefore excluded from this conversation.)

Contact between agents and athletes has been a special area of focus, and the biggest instance of that thus far has been the investigation centering on the University of North Carolina. Centering on a party in Miami thrown by an agent, the scandal resulted in a series of improper benefits given to defensive end Robert Quinn, who was declared ineligible by the NCAA.

No one would question that accepting jewelry as a gift from anyone they’re not related to is a very dumb thing to do for a student-athlete to do. Quinn himself likely wouldn’t argue that after accepting gifts of jewelry from a “financial advisor” got him declared ineligible.

What is sketchy is the NCAA’s method of collecting the information, and UNC’s role in aiding the NCAA. From the Sporting News:

In an interview with Sporting News, Quinn said he was in at least his second face-to-face interview with an NCAA investigator, who to that point did not know the jewelry existed. Also present was a UNC attorney. Quinn’s cell phone sat on his leg. The interviewer asked to see it.

Quinn looked to the UNC attorney for advice, and he said to hand it over. Quinn did.

The NCAA investigator scrolled through Quinn’s messages, asking him who each person was. He eventually came across a text about the jewelry.

The attorney acted on behalf of the university’s interests but certainly not in Quinn’s here. Quinn wasn’t required to hand over his phone, but in going in with a university attorney he certainly had to think the attorney was there to look after his interests, since Quinn was a University of North Carolina football player, and wasn’t he part of the calculation here?

It’s not the world’s most illicit thing, and what goes on in an NCAA investigation doesn’t fall under the same guidelines of a legal investigation. However, it’s still dodgy business by UNC to send an attorney along to mime the part of counsel for a player in an NCAA investigation when it clearly did not have the player’s interests at heart. As for the NCAA wanting to see your cellphone, this is an object lesson for anyone else getting investigated: cooperation is neither mandatory nor necessarily in your best interests.

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