Arizona Assistant Coaches Took the Fall for Sean Miller

A recent IARP decision is just the latest in an inefficient crime-and-punishment process that allows coaches to avoid accountability.

On page 48 of the NCAA’s Independent Review Panel report that set Sean Miller free, it is noted that the former Arizona and current Xavier men’s basketball coach keeps a “Book of Truth.” It’s described as a journal in which he “documented many compliance-related events and actions.” This is noted as one of many examples of how Miller promoted an atmosphere of NCAA rules compliance and properly monitored his program.

Forgive the play on words, but it is the alleged Book (Richardson) of Untruth that allowed Miller to escape sanctions despite a panoply of major violations committed on his watch at Arizona. That and the Mark (Phelps) of Untruth. Those two assistant coaches were involved in brazen academic fraud, bribery and impermissible benefits—and they were slammed for it. Miller shared no accountability.

Richardson famously went to prison and then, on Wednesday, was hit with a 10-year show cause that will all but end any hopes of being a college coach again; Phelps got a two-year show cause penalty.

Their multimillionaire boss? He didn’t know anything, so he didn’t get anything, according to the panel. Carry on, Sean. Let the Book of Truth be your bailout. (Insert your own eye roll here.)

Richardson and Phelps lied, denied and concealed what they were doing from Miller, according to the hearing panel. In particular, they accepted the notion that Richardson, who had worked for 10 years as Miller’s ace recruiter, went rogue to arrange a $40,000 payment for a falsified academic transcript to get a player eligible.

“All of the actions, or nearly all of the actions, that these two took were covert,” said panel chair Dana Welch. “In our view, these kind of actions could not have been detected by the head coach. … We looked at that very seriously, we deliberated very seriously about it, and we felt that the information just did not support head coach responsibility.”

And so, the greatest tradition in all of college basketball continues: crap hits the fan, assistant coaches (most of them Black) take the fall, head coaches (most of them white) walk. It’s been that way forever, and the NCAA’s attempts to close that loophole in its crime-and-punishment process have remained laughably inefficient. All these smart people in college athletics, and they’ve let this chronic injustice persist in plain sight.

Former Arizona and current Xavier head coach Sean Miller will not face any sanctions following a report from the NCAA’s Independent Review Panel.  :: Soobum Im/USA TODAY Sports

The deniability fig leaf is scheduled to be discarded in 2023, in the form of strict liability legislation—if the head coach’s program is caught cheating, the head coach gets punished. But that’s too late to apply to the last of the FBI cases that follow the Arizona wrist slap (Kansas and LSU). We’ll see what happens with those.

But this overall dynamic has been going on for decades. Former Kentucky assistant coach Dwane Casey got a five-year show cause penalty as part of a multilevel scandal there. His boss, Eddie Sutton, proclaimed his innocence,but resigned and had another job (at Oklahoma State) 13 months later. People thought that was unfair. That was 1989.

Two basketball staffers resigned amid an investigation at Connecticut in 2010. The school was hit with sanctions in February 2011 that included a two-year show cause for one of those staffers—and a three-game suspension the following season for head coach Jim Calhoun, who kept his job. “He has encouraged compliance,” the school said. Less than two months later, Calhoun led UConn to the national title.

By the fall of 2012, after everyone’s intelligence had been sufficiently insulted, the NCAA decided it needed to tighten that loophole. It passed legislation that said, “an institution's head coach is presumed to be responsible for the actions of all institutional staff members who report, directly or indirectly, to the head coach.” That was lauded, in one law journal for a firm that did work in the college sports space, as follows: “Under the new enforcement structure, coaches will no longer be able to plead they ‘just didn’t know’ to avoid sanctions. Instead, they will be presumed to know about their program’s violations unless they prove otherwise.”

How naive it was to think that would actually work. Coaches (and their lawyers) found the workaround. Hold meetings, fill out forms, visit the compliance office—create the Book of Truth—and behold, an atmosphere of compliance was born. Busywork shall deliver the head coach caught in a bind.

When the FBI scandal erupted in September 2017, the coaches arrested were all Black assistants: Richardson of Arizona; Chuck Person of Auburn; Lamont Evans of Oklahoma State; Tony Bland of USC. As this snaked its way through court, the voices of Miller and LSU coach Will Wade were caught on wiretap talking to aspiring agent Christian Dawkins. Kansas’ Bill Self was texting with Adidas bagman T.J. Gassnola. Louisville’s Rick Pitino was embroiled in his umpteenth scandal. The expectation was that—this time—there might actually be an NCAA price for the head coaches to pay.

Then the IARP came stumbling onto the stage like Inspector Clouseau. Turning over the NCAA’s biggest and most complex cases ever to an investigative pop-up shop with no experience in its esoteric realm will go down as one of the worst decisions in the history of an association rife with terrible ideas. Outsourcing the controversial work was so Mark Emmert that it hurts.

After unconscionable delay and expense, the IARP has cleared four of its six cases. The scorecard: no significant sanctions for the schools; no sanctions at all for the active head coaches; and show cause penalties are flying at the assistants. One from North Carolina State got six years; two from Louisville got two years each; and now the combined 12 years for Richardson and Phelps.

The IRP hearing panel noted that it was “intentional” in not applying penalties that would affect players who had no connection to the violations at Arizona. That’s consistent with what it did at Louisville, North Carolina State and Memphis (which was not a FBI-related case). That’s fine and fair.

Yet when a school is caught up in bribery and a five-figure payment to commit academic fraud, and the head coach catches none of it, that’s a bad look built on the flimsy premise of plausible deniability. As one former coach said Wednesday in a text message: “How do you think they could possibly justify zero (for Miller) and 10 years (for Richardson)? They were in the same office, homes, cars, hotels and had worked side-by-side for years.”

But there were meetings and paperwork and compliance visits … and the Book of Truth. Which made one other appearance in the hearing panel’s report.

It pertained to one of Miller’s wiretapped conversations with Dawkins about who was offering what to recruits. Specifically, Dawkins “asking for $150,000 to direct (a prospect) to Arizona.” Miller said at that point he “had reason to be suspicious” of Dawkins and distanced himself from him.

From the infractions report: “The hearing panel notes that although (Miller) has maintained that the solicitation of $150,000 from (Dawkins) caused him to immediately end their relationship, he did not document the phone call about the attempted bribe in his ‘Book of Truth,’ nor did he report the incident to the institution’s compliance office until after (Richardson’s) arrest, which occurred approximately one week after the attempted solicitation.”

Some truths, it turns out, are better left undocumented.