Gene Chizik spoke out against the finger-pointing directed at his former coaching staff. (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

By Zac Ellis

Gene Chizik said his Auburn team “did it right” despite allegations of NCAA violations, specifically academic fraud, within the program while he was head coach. In his first interview since being fired as the Tigers’ headman after last season, Chizik spoke with Alabama’s WJOX radio on Monday and defended his tenure at the school.

A Roopstigo.com story earlier this month reported numerous instances of academic fraud, as well as impermissible financial benefits to players, under Chizik’s watch. On Monday, Auburn released a statement from AD Jay Jacobs refuting the Roopstigo report based on a lack of evidence found by an internal review of the program.

Chizik backed the university’s defense, saying his reputation has been on the line with these allegations:

“I’m here because I care about my reputation, I care about the integrity of who I am and what I do, and I’m simply giving out the facts, because I’m 100 percent confident that we did it right,” Chizik said.

The coach went on to deny the allegations that his coaching staff changed players’ grades:

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NCAA enforcement official Dave Didion has accepted a compliance position at Auburn. (Michael Chang/Getty Images)

By Zac Ellis

The NCAA’s enforcement staff took another hit over the weekend when veteran enforcement official Dave Didion opted to leave his post with the organization. He’ll assume the role of associate athletics director for compliance at Auburn, the same school he left 14 years ago to join the NCAA. USA Today reported the move on Friday.

Didion is the latest in a line of casualties in the NCAA’s enforcement department. Investigator Ameen Najjar was fired in 2012 after it was discovered he signed off on payments to Miami booster Nevin Shaprio’s attorney during the NCAA’s probe into the Hurricanes. Vice president of enforcement Julie Roe Lach was later fired as a result of the investigation. Two other enforcement staffers, investigators Rich Johanningmeier and Abigail Grantstein, have also left the NCAA within the last year.

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Cam Newton probably could’ve bought everybody in his class a donut shop, but he settled for not saddling any of his new schoolmates with the burdens of operating a small business:

Cam brought our class doughnuts and orange juice! #WarCamEagle!! http://t.co/eXQhuQgIjM—
Brookelyne Harvel (@UnoOjo) February 21, 2013

It’s just a few baby steps from here to the baby elephant thing, right?

[Via War Eagle Reader.]

Tracking the zeitgeist of college football’s second weekend through social media:

MAMA! COME ON INSIDE! ONE OF THESE UTAH TEAMS BOUT TO PUNT! CAN’T MISS THAT!

— Jason Kirk (@JasonKirkSBN) September 8, 2012

ACC MISSED THE BOAT ON UTAH.

— THE KEY PLAY (@thekeyplay) September 8, 2012

Special Teams Coach Beehive was a sentimental hire from the start for Utah. Won’t save his job after this game. (Plus: is beehive.)

— edsbs (@edsbs) September 8, 2012

@andy_staples @ben_jones88 We’re still getting our shirts and ties pressed at 9 am.We’re not Juggalos.

— Bobby Big Wheel (@BobbyBigWheel) September 8, 2012

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Cam Clear, pictured here on National Signing Day 2011, was arrested after stealing a laptop from a Tennessee baseball player. (Landov)

Continuing a proud tradition of SEC football players named Cameron operating in a state of blissful oblivion regarding how easy stolen laptops are to track, backup Tennessee tight end Cam Clear was arrested Tuesday for felony theft after being caught with a Vol baseball player’s laptop. This being a college-athlete-swiping-electronics story, it will not surprise you to learn that he was apprehended in the dumbest possible fashion:

UT police detected Tuesday someone was using the laptop to log into the university’s wireless network and caught Clear sitting at the keyboard, according to the warrant.

We’ve said this before in about five different ways, but in today’s rapidly evolving world of technology, it disturbs us deeply that young Americans can reach their majority without understanding how easy it is to track gadgetry. Clear regretfully neglected to finish the drill in classic Cameron fashion by printing his name on the computer in letters visible from space or flinging it out the window in an effort to evade capture. No word just yet on his status with the team (UPDATE: indefinite suspension, ahoy!), but best case scenario, a stint in junior college and monster one-year career with an SEC West team will precede early entry into the draft. (Worst case scenario, he ends up in the What To Expect When You’re Expecting sequel.)

*And what the blue heck is James Cameron up to on the bottom of the ocean, all by himself? We’ll never really know, will we?

Cam Newton, poet. (AP)

Once college football players cross the stage at the NFL draft, they generally pass out of our purview for good, but by special reader request, we will respond to Cam Newton writing a poem commemorating the unveiling of a statue memorializing his brief and bright career at Auburn.

We hate a lot of modern art, though we will support at the top of our lungs the necessity of its existence and the right of other people to create it. We just don’t want to have to look at it. It took moving to this neighborhood after college and being immersed in gallery openings all the time to finally embolden us to take a stand against having to stand in poorly lit converted warehouses pretending to find meaning in artisanal crayon cuneiform homages. It’s one thing to go to, say, the Louvre, but for some reason we don’t have much use for living artists, and find it difficult to see man’s inhumanity to man in an acrylic-painted lightbulb attached to a board that blinks with the precise frequency of a mockingbird’s flapping wings. It is not for us. We were around 25 before we realized this was OK.

We feel the same way about modern poetry. That’s a lot of introductory text, but we feel it’s important that you, gentle readers, know the barren well we’re coming from when asked to evaluate art. Here now, the opening stanzas of Newton’s poem, as lovingly transcribed by the Opelika-Auburn News:

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Gene Chizik can quit hollering now that the NCAA has closed its Auburn case. (AP)

• Now all you haters will have to go back to your jobs at the hater factory: That NCAA investigation of Auburn concerning a certain journeyman quarterback, his nefarious daddy and some monies? All done! Major violations? Not found! You can read the full text of the NCAA’s letter to Auburn, and it is worth your time, particularly concerning the HBO allegations and substantiation thereof. War Plainstigerbird types, we know this is difficult, and we will give you a few hours to adjust to being appreciative of the NCAA’s sage decision-making process.

(NB: You may continue to hate the sensationalist media at your discretion. But just know that Danny Sheridan thinks they’re all jealous of him, and has no use for makeup artists, and that puts you on the same side as him, kinda, and oh boy, I have got to lie down and have a big glass of wine before I attempt to parse all the levels of hateration here. It’s too much.)

In a way, we’re all winners here. What does that mean for you and me? That I get to jettison this topic for good and continue covering actual football instead of the NCAA. If the level of concern in my inbox is any indication, I know y’all would certainly rather be reading about games than bank records. Onward!

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It would appear the NCAA shares the Internet’s general opinion of Danny Sheridan. The governing body has taken time on this sleepy Friday to release a statement on the highly-publicized meeting between the “analyst” and its personnel. It is short and to the point and is reprinted here in full for posterity:

Danny Sheridan continues to make vague, unsubstantiated claims without backing them up with proof. Contrary to his claims of having an inside source with details on the Auburn investigation, the NCAA has not provided information to Sheridan or anyone else.  As a matter of due diligence, the NCAA spoke with Sheridan this week to determine if he had any facts pertaining to the investigation. Sheridan, however, did not provide any information to the enforcement staff and certainly did not provide a name. Instead, he unsuccessfully attempted to gather information for his own use.

Isn’t institutionalized vitriol the best? There’s a strange kind of beauty in the venom between the lines here, like a highly-structured poem.

The NCAA has made it clear the Cam Newton investigation is still ongoing. (AP)

As mentioned yesterday morning, the Cam Newton investigation is still open as far as the NCAA is concerned, and that’s not news. Julie Roe Lach has taken great pains to assure involved parties there’s more to come, be it new information and possible sanctions or an uneventful wrapping of the case. Remember that these cases normally take years to wind down, and that we’re not even a year into this thing.

Striving to keep the Newtons in the headlines is the charitably-titled “analyst” and self-styled NCAA mover and shaker Danny Sheridan, who basked in the sickly glow of the Paul Finebaum show last week for several nauseating minutes before backing off his promise to reveal the name of the “bag man” in the alleged Cam Newton pay-for-play incident. Now, with all reputable and ill-considered media outlets exhausted, Sheridan’s taking his single-ring show to the one audience still clamoring to hear what he has to say: the NCAA itself.

Danny Sheridan is going to the NCAA to reveal the source within the NCAA who told him (ALLEGEDLY!) what he says the NCAA purportedly already knows? Is that the correct read here? Because it’s a laugh riot if that’s what’s happening.

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