NCAA investigating Arizona State football over recruiting violations

Pete Thamel has the latest surrounding the NCAA investigation into Arizona State football. Hear the full conversation on the Yahoo Sports College Podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen.

Video transcript

DAN WETZEL: Someone's a whistleblower at Arizona State. They were hosting players during COVID when you weren't allowed to host recruits, allegations of all sorts of stuff. Give us the latest, Pete, on the Arizona State scandal. We love a good scandal.

PETE THAMEL: There was a perception on the West Coast that Arizona State wasn't above board in recruiting. But people were much more offended by the fact that they broke the COVID protocols. So it's A, a competitive advantage, and a distinct competitive advantage to have kids on your campus when no one else can come on campus. B, it's brazen. And C, it's just stupid, right?

So the Arizona State program, their actual football program, after talking to more than a dozen people the last two days, is just a cultural disaster. And I feel very confident it saying that. I had people lining up to talk because things have gotten so divisive in that program.

Essentially, Herm Edwards is asleep at the top. Antonio Pierce has made a power play and taken over and brushed out-- it was an in-or-out type of environment. And anyone who's not going to go in the gray areas in recruiting gets sent off. So not surprisingly, those people who get sent off are just generally unhappy.

And the joke calling around that I write-- that I write about in the story is that nobody could figure out who sent the dossier in and who dropped the dime because there's so many people who are pissed off. So it's one of the-- usually, usually it's not that hard to find the aggrieved party. We've done a lot of these stories over the years.

In this case, there's people reading me group texts. It was like the college football game of Clue. Is Mr. Green in the Conservatory with the lead pipe? It was a really interesting dynamic. And I had multiple people say to me "I can't wait till the NCAA calls and talks to them," which is not a quote you often get--

DAN WETZEL: No.

PETE THAMEL: --when you're doing these stories. So that program has seriously gone sideways. I said this to you on the phone yesterday, Dan. I was like boy.

And who knows what's going to happen, right? The NCAA you can never predict. These investigations go painfully slow. We'll wait as a job-- I've used that line a few times on the phone this week.

But it's clear that the culture of that program is not great. And you add in the expectations that have kind of developed organically this offseason because of roster and schedule and everything like that. If Arizona State can somehow keep it all together and everybody can keep their job and they can have a great season, I'd be pretty surprised at this point, just knowing all the different things I heard that have gone on in that program in recent months and in years.

And the climate there was so bad that I was told at least a half dozen staffers and coaches were actually collecting receipts, screenshots of things because they knew stuff was going to go down and they wanted to protect their job. And if they were going to get fired, they were going to be like well, I have this. Or if the NCAA called, they were like I have this.

So in this case, I think the NCAA has a pretty good chance to prove the visits, if only because these are all kids who are still in high school or haven't played a college game yet. They can offer them immunity, especially the ones who didn't go to Arizona State, which is a lot of them. And they can say OK, we'll give you immunity. You're not going to play if you don't talk to us. If you lie to us you're not going to play and we catch you in a lie, so let's go.

And that's some of the NCAA's best enforcement, because they have no leverage, generally have no subpoena power, as we've talked about for years. They actually have a pretty good amount of leverage with what I was told was 30 to 40 kids who'd gone through over a period between October and the spring game. I was told the spring game was like a normal official visit weekend.

So they were-- they were brazen about it. They're rooting for the NCAA to find the security tape footage from the facility, because there was so much of it. So it was an interesting story.

DAN WETZEL: I just can't believe you'd try that and think it would work.

PAT FORDE: I mean, it is brazen and stupid. I mean, it's unbelievable. And I do know, Pete, echoing your point, there are people in college sports that are especially offended by the recruiting contact violations during a pandemic and an absolute unified shutdown. This is the right thing to do for the health and safety of all involved.

And in absolute fairness, the NCAA says don't recruit, we're not going to recruit. And when people, the people that have violated that, it has pissed off those who have not violated. I know John Duncan, the VP for enforcement, last year told me that he was personally offended by the fact that people just kept right on recruiting.