As Predicted Here, Herrod is no King

Two things were interesting about the D-G’s lead sports story on Aug. 27, which scooped the area’s other dailies by detailing NCAA sanctions that are being self-imposed by the UA athletic department.

First, in the Business Journal’s July 10 edition of whispers, we wrote that the UA’s alleged recruiting violations relating to Dallas booster Ted Herrod were worse than the public was being led to believe. That same week, apologist sports columnists, including the D-G’s, wrote that no major NCAA rules were violated and that everything was “OK.”

Now Herrod is banned from supporting the program for five years, senior Randy Garner is suspended for a game, and the Razorbacks are offering to surrender scholarships.

This, of course, sent the apologists into spin mode. The one in Little Rock wrote on Aug. 27 that although Garner accepted three times the wages he’d actually earned from Herrod, everything is hunky dorey because Garner is a good person and attends Bible studies.

Huh?

Second, how is it that the D-G’s supposed new partner, CPI, got left out of the scoop loop? The Times ran a staff-written Herrod story Aug. 28, as did the Morning News. But the Daily Record only had the day-old Associated Press version.

Had the Morning News hustled on its second-day story — which it did not — it could have easily beaten the D-G’s so-called partners.