Bielema’s Recruiting Accusations Nothing New For Urban Meyer

National Signing Day is come and gone, but the stings of recruits lost remains. For Bret Bielema the sting is over losing three-star offensive line recruit Kyle Dodson to the new Urban Meyer regime at Ohio State. Bielema has made it quite clear he isn’t happy with Meyer, not just over this recruit but, at least as this quote would indicate, Meyer’s entire practice of recruiting:

“There’s a few things that happened early on I made people be aware of that I didn’t want to see in this league that I had seen take place at other leagues,” Bielema said. “Other recruiting tactics, other recruiting practices that are illegal. I was very up front and was very poignant to the fact. I actually reached out to Coach Meyer and shared my thoughts and concerns with him and the situation got rectified.”

It seemed like the story might end there, but things have escalated quickly: Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez will bring his complaints before Big Ten commissioner Jim Delaney on Friday in Chicago.

As tends to be the case with anything that will go before a neutral party, neither party is divulging the exact details of the situation. However, accusations of foul play are nothing new for Urban Meyer. While Meyer was the head coach at the University of Florida, he was accused of foul play in the recruitment of Nu’Keese Richardson by then Tennessee head coach Lane Kiffin at a signing day breakfast for Volunteer boosters:

“I’m gonna turn Florida in right here in front of you,” Kiffin said, according to WVLT-TV. “While Nu’Keese was on campus, his phone kept ringing. One of the coaches says, ‘Who’s that?’ And he said, ‘Urban Meyer.’”

Big Ten basketball fans will certainly remember a head coach who was fired over violations stemming from excessive phone calls to recruits: former Indiana basketball head coach Kelvin Sampson. Kiffin eventually landed Richardson, and he continued at the aforementioned breakfast:

I love the fact that Urban had to cheat and still didn’t get him.

The SEC eventually sanctioned Kiffin, citing the following rule in the conferences bylaws:

SEC Bylaw 10.5.1 clearly states that coaches and administrators shall refrain from directed public criticism of other member institutions, their staffs or players.

This bylaw is awfully consistent with a quote Bret Bielema has cited in reference to a quote from a coach from an unnamed out-of-conference school which attempted to recruit him back when he was an assistant under Barry Alvarez:

You know what the difference between the Big Ten and this conference is? In the Big Ten everybody tells on everybody, in our conference nobody tells on anybody.

The illusion of college football (and the SEC in particular) as a squeaky clean and morally upright organization has been busted on multiple occasions; we hardly need another example of illegal recruitment of players to do so. But given the landscape of college football, would it be surprising if Urban Meyer (or any coach of a similarly high profile) committed a violation of the NCAA’s recruiting rules in his courtship of Kyle Dodson or other members of Ohio State’s excellent 2012 recruiting class?

This is, of course, the most rhetorical question. You should not need my guidance to figure out the answer.

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