One of my boys sent this to me.
Messed up in the most extreme.
Former Florida International recruits get schooled without stepping
foot on campus
By Dave Hyde
Sun Sentinel
For anyone who noted Isiah Thomas had never coached in college and wondered how he'd adapt to NCAA rules and Florida International University culture, this story is for you.
It starts with a phone call between two high school seniors.
"Did you hear?" Jamel Marshall asked in Orlando.
"Hear what?" Terrance Beasley said in Pensacola.
"FIU doesn't want us anymore," Marshall said.
This was two days after Thomas was hired at FIU last month. It's how Beasley discovered the school that wooed him, visited him, attended his games and ultimately signed him last fall suddenly wasn't an option anymore.
No one from FIU called him that day. In fact, three weeks later, Beasley still hasn't talked to anyone at FIU. Not Isiah. Not a school official. No one.
"Some assistant called my dad and wanted me to sign my release papers," Beasley said. "They said they'd give me a year of scholarship, if I wanted, since they had to honor that. But they told my dad I couldn't expect to play basketball there."
So he signed the release?
"Yeah, I didn't want to go where I wasn't wanted," he said. "It was pretty messed up."
That's as good a way as any to put it. Pretty messed up. As is a system that relegates kids to commodities. Consider: When a coach leaves a school, incoming recruits who already have signed letters-of-intent aren't allowed to leave the school, too. They have to play for a coach who never recruited them.
Remember as far back as 1989, when Jimmy Johnson left the University of Miami and football recruit Darren Krein considered suing over not being allowed to be released from his letter-of-intent?
And more than a decade later Miami's Butch Davis was telling recruits he wasn't going anywhere a few days before he did?
The flip side is when a new coach enters a program and runs off inherited kids. That's the story of FIU basketball now. Thomas will be judged on winning, only winning, and so wanted his own style of players in. You can understand that. Or not.
"If there were 100 ways to handle this, 99 were better than what this guy (Thomas) did," Beasley's Pensacola coach, Bob Stinnet, said Saturday. "I coached at LSU and New Orleans in the '80s, and I've never seen anything like this."
The freed-up scholarships were put to use. Thomas signed four junior-college kids.
"Can I just come there and do a workout for you?" Marshall said when Thomas finally did phone a couple of weeks ago.
Marshall was asked about the response.
"He said, 'It's going to be really hard for you to play,"' Marshall said. "That's all I needed to hear. He was going to show favoritism to his players, and I didn't want to get involved in that. I signed the release.
"At first, when I heard Isiah Thomas was going to be the coach at FIU, I was kind of excited. He was a great basketball player. It didn't take long before I figured it was bad news for me."
Sometimes you play a sport. Sometimes it plays you.
As for the original issue about Thomas' lack of college experience, well, this episode shows he understands how to work the system. And the spurned recruits? Marshall is talking with Colgate, Eastern Kentucky and Gardner Webb while Beasley is with Tennessee-Chattanooga, New Orleans, South Alabama and Troy State.
"Everything will work out, I hope," Marshall said.
"I'm praying I look back on this and call it a blessing in disguise," Beasley said.
The two former recruits won't set foot on the FIU campus. But they sure got an education on college athletics from the school.