Coach O Told The Most Batshit Insane Story About Recruiting Adrian Peterson
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Listen I love Coach O. We all love Coach O. What I am about to say is not an indictment nor a reflection on him in any way. But what the fuck was that??? This was the NCAA as recently as 13 months ago. If you wanted to recruit a player you simply must have been able to do more than give him the Jesus Shuttlesworth treatment at Tech U. You'd better be able to relocate their family members throughout the penal system of these United States of America. HUH??? Stoops could've been running the worst program in America and it wouldn't have mattered, as long as Papa Peterson had them on the local channel that's where AP was headed to play. Coach O couldn't be seen in the same car as Adrian Peterson, couldn't even buy him more than a cookie for dinner, but he could attempt to manipulate the criminal justice system and ship a man from Oklahoma to Southern California just to land a top prospect. That was above board in the eyes of the NCAA.
What happens if AP sucked in this scenario? Say Coach O successfully got his dad moved to Los Angeles but Peterson wasn't getting any touches behind Reggie Bush and LenDale White, do they add time to his sentence? Do they take money off his books? Do they send him to Alcatraz? Now this story took place roughly 20 years ago, but the NCAA saw these kind of tactics as reasonable and within the boundaries of amateur athletics as recently as 2020. And that doesn't take into account the 50 or so years prior to this where big time college football meant big business for the blue bloods. Roughly 70 years of some of the shadiest dealings between grown men and high schoolers you could imagine. Absolutely nothing is farfetched. No amount of cars, homes, or prison cells changing hands were off the table if it meant gaining an edge on a potential competitor.
Now if you'll excuse me I'm gonna go spend the rest of my life thinking about how hilarious a backfield of Reggie Bush and Adrian Peterson would have been.