Last week, Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton acknowledged that his school is fully expecting to receive a Letter of Inquiry from the NCAA regarding potential recruiting violations allegedly committed during Lane Kiffin‘s 13 months as UT’s head coach.
One of the most prized — and controversial — signees of Kiffin’s one and only Volunteer recruiting class was running back Bryce Brown.
You didn’t need a degree in astrophysics to see 19 months ago the potential the orbits of those two paragraphs had of slamming headfirst into one another at some point in the future. And, finally, the future has arrived.
Arthur Brown, father of the former Tennessee and quasi-current Kansas State running back, tells ESPN.com‘s Joe Schad that NCAA investigators have asked to speak to his son regarding the way Kiffin handled recruiting while serving the coach was at Tennessee.
“They said they want to talk about the recruiting practices of Tennessee under Kiffin,” Arthur Brown said. “We have nothing to hide. We have no need to be deceptive. If we made a mistake I can say it would not have been intentional. But I think this is about more than Bryce.”
Based on the fact that Hamilton expects to receive an LOI from the NCAA, it’s pretty safe to assume that Arthur Brown is correct, that the governing body’s interest in talking is about more than Bryce.
Brown’s father also said they had not yet talked to the NCAA because they were in the midst of preparing an appeal of UT head coach Derek Dooley‘s decision to deny Bryce a release from his scholarship. That appeal was held today; regardless of the outcome, however, Bryce Brown will still enroll and attend classes at KSU later this month.
If Dooley’s decision is not overturned on appeal, Brown would have to pay his way through school this year.
Either way, the RB will not be eligible to play for the Wildcats until the 2011 season.
