When SEC football coaches believe it’s time to address a problem, it becomes a national issue. And when, on the off chance they’re all united behind said cause, it leads to rule changes.
As the most influential football conference gets together for its annual spring meetings in Destin, Florida, this week, tampering will be front and center as a runaway issue the league is looking to corral.
Kentucky coach Mark Stoops isn’t leading the charge, but he’s been impacted in much of the same way Louisville coach Jeff Brohm has.
Tampering is such a finesse move, it’s hard to prove even when it seems there’s smoke. Usually a third party, who may or may not have direct ties to a player, floats out the idea that a certain school is paying a certain amount of money if they’d be willing to transfer.
It’s not exactly new, either; a lot of eyebrows were raised in 2022 when Pitt receiver Jordan Addison, fresh off winning the Fred Biletnikoff Award for the nation’s best receiver, abruptly transferred to USC.
Some of the tampering cases are easy to spot. When a player enters the portal with a no-contact mandate, ensuring there won’t be any cold calls from coaches, and ends up signing with the new program within days of leaving the old, that might be due to tampering.
That’s why speculation swirled when former Georgia quarterback Carson Beck transferred to Miami during the winter window within 24 hours of entering the portal reportedly for a multimillion-dollar deal between $3 million and $4 million. (Beck’s girlfriend attended Miami, but instead of it being a caveat to why he’d leave UGA, it added her to the conspiracy of interfering to bring him to The U.)
Frankly, there’s never been a better time to tamper with another school’s talented players.
Immediate eligibility means said player doesn’t have to sit…
Source link : https://www.courier-journal.com/story/sports/columnists/c-l-brown/2025/05/26/sec-spring-meetings-college-tampering-mark-stoops-kentucky-wildcats/83569781007/
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Publish date : 2025-05-26 09:06:00
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