A puff piece on Larry Fitzgerald as it relates to being the cover boy for EA Sports NCAA Football 2005 game.

Cross-posted from Sardonic Views at Lee’s request so he could post responses. I live in Ohio, so this is a big story everywhere. Lee has dual loyalties owing to his graduate work at OSU. Hey, it’s the slow season for the blog.

As I said, the $6,000 O’Brien paid to a recruit was enough to warrant his firing — no matter how clean O’Brien’s past was (any shock Dick Vitale thinks otherwise). Paying money to a recruit is a clear, major violation. It is a bright line that was crossed. Now, though, it looks like it was just the tip, and it may take down another school and coach.

The lawsuit also names former assistant Paul Biancardi as a major player in the Savovic violations of extra benefits. Biancardi led Wright State to a 14-14 record (10-6 in the Horizon League) in his first season at the school in 2003-04 and denies Salyers’ charges of any wrongdoing.

Proving Salyers’ case will be the hardest part for the NCAA, according to a source. But if Biancardi did commit violations, even while he was at Ohio State, then he could be subject to NCAA penalties. And the NCAA would likely expect Wright State to take action against its head coach for past violations.

As I recall, Wright State had gotten its choice down to Biancardi and then Pitt assistant coach Jamie Dixon. Think Wright State would like to reconsider. Though, to be fair, I think Dixon actually withdrew from consideration for the job.

This lawsuit that started getting all of this out there has everything that a good college sports scandal needs. Money, someone else doing the homework and sex.

A lawsuit that led to the firing of Ohio State basketball coach Jim O’Brien alleges that O’Brien and an assistant knew that player Boban Savovic received regular payments and classroom help, in defiance of NCAA rules.

Kathleen Salyers, who said she housed and fed the player for two years, testified in a deposition in April that she spent thousands of dollars on phone bills, car insurance and spending money for Savovic, who was on the 1998-99 team that O’Brien led to the Final Four. She said she often put the money in Savovic’s medicine cabinet.

She said Ohio State assistant coach Paul Biancardi regularly contacted her about Savovic and often told her he was calling at O’Brien’s instruction.

“He (Biancardi) called and told me when taxes were due, when Boban was flunking a class, to go and talk to the professor and have his grade changed,” Salyers said. “There were many, many calls from Paul Biancardi requesting that I pay something for Boban.”
…
In the deposition, Salyers said she did not receive $1,000 per month plus expenses she had been promised by Dan and Kim Roslovic, Savovic’s sponsors. Salyers sued the Ohio State boosters, seeking $510,000 in expenses and damages.

She also acknowledged that her attorney asked O’Brien for money to keep her story from becoming public.
…
Salyers, who was the Roslovics’ baby sitter, said she agreed to take in Savovic after receiving a call from Dan Roslovic, who said he was calling from Biancardi’s basketball office.

According to the lawsuit, the Roslovics said Savovic could no longer stay with them because of NCAA rules. Salyers said Biancardi told her she should lie and tell people that Savovic was living in her house because he was a friend of her son’s and they played basketball together.

Salyers said she did most of Savovic’s homework for three years because he had difficulty with the English language.
…
Her deposition also alleged:

that Savovic and a booster had a sexual relationship.
that Savovic amassed a bill of more than $10,000 on a long-distance telephone card that belonged to the father of New York player agent Mark Cornstein. NCAA rules bar any contact between agents and eligible players.
that Cornstein had access to Ohio State players and she had seen him in the Buckeyes’ locker room after games.

The booster was Kim Roslovic, and she admitted to the affair. She and her husband have since divorced

The last bit about the agent influence could be the big thing that gets OSU on the wrong side of the NCAA.

Four former OSU players are current clients of Pinnacle Management Corp., whose founder and president, Marc Cornstein, was instrumental in helping O’Brien’s staff land Yugoslavian recruits.
…
Simmy is a nickname for Spomenko Pajovic, a New York-based Yugoslavian agent who helped Savovic come to the United States to play high school basketball in New Jersey for one season prior to attending OSU.

Pajovic and Cornstein worked with Biancardi, now the head coach at Wright State, to bring Savovic, Radojevic and Cobe Ocokoljic to the Buckeyes, according to former Ohio State assistant coach Dave Spiller.

“He gave us access to knowing who some of the better European kids were,” Spiller said of Cornstein. “We were trying to establish some resources that would identify for us who the better kids were so we could get an edge in recruiting. [Cornstein] certainly attended some of our games, but he didn’t have any special privileges.”

Salyers’ deposition disputes that, saying she saw Cornstein and Pajovic enter the OSU locker room with other program insiders immediately after games.

“They wanted to get ahold of Scoonie Penn and Michael Redd, and I believe there was another one,” Salyers said in her deposition, later identifying the third player as Ken Johnson.

Pinnacle Management’s Web site lists Penn, Savovic, Ocokoljic and Velimir Radinovic, this past season’s OSU team captain, as current clients.

Cornstein did not return multiple telephone messages Wednesday, nor did O’Brien’s attorney, James Zeszutek.

Thirty of the 32 basketball players Cornstein lists as clients on his Web site are of Slavic descent, with Penn one of the exceptions.

Pinnacle’s site is here. Surprise, no mention of what is happening at OSU on their site. Hey, they represent Darko Milicic (the guy taken after LeBron, but before Carmello).

There are some questions as to the truthfulness of all that the the lady who is making all of these claims, but there is more than enough smoke that suggests that this will be getting worse. Really worse.

This will make it more difficult for OSU to land any “name” coach for the job. The possibility of sanctions hanging over the program and being the one to restore OSU Basketball’s reputation and win is a lot to ask without a boatload of money and one hell of a lengthy contract. Even with that, some coaches aren’t going to be interested.

Hey, Nolan Richardson’s out there.