Secondary Recruiting Violations Could Be Reported At WVU

by 5th Year Senior on Oct 20, 2009 12:36 PM EDT in Mountaineer Basketball Comment 4 comments

If you attended Mountaineer Madness, you saw the great display of support from the Mountaineer Maniacs toward star recruit Adreian Payne. The Maniacs made t-shirts, signs, and passed out flyers describing specific cheers to give Payne attention during the pre-Madness festivities. While this shows great knowledge and awareness by the Maniacs, it could also be a recruiting violation.

As Mike Casazza points out in the Daily Mail, this involvement by the Maniacs, the largest student organization on campus, could be seen as the University promoting/celebrating Payne's visit. As usual, WVU's compliance department is being proactive with this issue and has already been in contact with the Big East about whether a violation did occur.

Hopefully, nothing will come of this, since nobody within the basketball program gave him any special recognition during the actual Madness festivities. There was a close call when Truck Bryant went off the cuff and started to run over to Mr. Payne, but was luckily (ed.: yes, "luckily") stopped by an assistant coach before anything occurred. If we do report a violation, it will only a very minor punishment.

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Tons of good news rolling in here today.

by jim_e25 on Oct 20, 2009 1:46 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Today has been filled with rainbows and lollipops, hasn't it?

by Dr. Charley West on Oct 20, 2009 1:46 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Over reaction

Although the Mountaineer Maniacs organization is loosely affiliated by SGA, it has it’s own budget and decisions are made by student members. The university as a who sponsors the organization, but the entire budget is made up by students membership dues and controlled by student leadership. Surely, as a previous member who knows many of the current members of the Maniacs leadership (students) there were no violations committed. These members know they cannot give recruits/players t-shirts, etc that would constitute a recruiting violation. Of course a fan group made posters and signs for the recruit(s) who visited as many campuses do, but this was not constrained to just maniacs members. Many times the entire student population gets lumped together as “Maniacs.” I reality there are in the neighborhood of 5,000 student members of this organization. If all 5,000 members of the fan group made signs and threw a tea party for a recruit it would be a clear violation, but random student fans holding up signs with a recruits name shouldn’t get conveyed as “the Maniacs created secondary recruiting violations”

by WVUManiac06 on Oct 20, 2009 3:03 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I hope you're right but...

It was more than just “random students” holding up signs. The president and other officers of the organization were the students passing out shirts and signs to others with Maniacs’ shirts on.

Also, being a former Maniac I know they have more than a “loose” affiliation with the SGA and University.

I was more worried about what Truck did but that appears to be alright.

by 5th Year Senior on Oct 20, 2009 4:01 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs