Former A&M LB Accused Jimbo Fisher's Staff of NCAA Violations And It Totally Backfired
Last week, former A&M LB Santino Marchiol accused Texas A&M of a bunch of different NCAA violations. He alleged that he was misdiagnosed by the team doctors and was forced to play through pain. He also said coaches were giving current players money to help host recruits on their unofficial visits. (PS: I know it’s a rule, but it’s just one of many dumb NCAA rules. Who cares if you hand a kid a $20 to take a recruit out to dinner??)
It all looked like it was going to be really damning for Texas A&M.
But the weird thing about the allegations though were that they were ONLY against Jimbo Fisher’s staff, not Kevin Sumlin’s who was the head coach during Marchoil’s redshirt year. The LB wanted to transfer, so he had to submit a waiver request to become immediately eligible in 2018.
And where did he want to transfer? Arizona. Kevin Sumlin’s new team. Conspiracy theories galore. So, I guess it would make sense to throw the new guy under the bus since Marchoil to play for his former head coach.
We talked about it on Comeback SZN, but I think the new NCAA transfer rules set a really dangerous precedent.
“the transfer is due to documented mitigating circumstances that are outside the student-athlete’s control and directly impact the health, safety and well-being of the student-athlete.”
If a kid wants to be eligible immediately, he has to have proof that his former team/program was mistreating him. Basically, this is going to let guys straight up snitch. The thing that really sucks is that there are some guys that have legit complaints especially when it comes to their physical health. But others will cry wolf because they don’t want to rot on the bench for a year wherever they transfer.
I think it’s plain and simple here. Marchiol wanted out and needed a way to make it look like he was in a bad situation in College Station. True or not, he knew it would get some attention. And of course, some former players came to A&M’s defense.
I could be wrong, but probably nobody was thinking about this kid until he decided to make a big stink last week. I’m sure the internet investigators did their due diligence to try to expose him. And it worked.
Talk about your all time backfires.
Coach Sumlin didn’t go into WHY Marchoil isn’t on the team anymore. But if we are drawing conclusions here…
According to The Dallas Morning News, a Hudl account that apparently belongs to Marchoil had a video that calls multiple A&M players “monkeys.” The video (that surfaced over the weekend) had the voice of an “unidentified man” making racist remarks while narrating some clips of Marchoil from a spring practice.
Here’s the video (shout out @
So basically this kid is just an asshole. A racist one, to be exact.
And Kevin Sumlin wasn’t having any of it. Good on you, Coach. Karma’s a bitch, amiright?