Long before Twitter, Facebook and 24-hour television news, author Mark Twain was quoted as saying, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is lacing up its boots.” And it’s easy to believe that might have been the idea here.
LSU is supposed to stand for Louisiana State University, not "Lie Straight Up."
LSU announced late Wednesday afternoon it is examining the circumstances surrounding the onfield activities Monday night of former Tigers receiver and current NFL star Odell Beckham Jr. following the College Football Playoff championship victory by the university’s football team.
MORE: OBJ and LSU: Explaining potential violation committed in cash handout
Beckham was videotaped during the victory celebration giving money to one of the team’s star wide receivers, an apparent violation of NCAA rules even if the player in question, junior receiver Justin Jefferson, plans to abandon his final year of college eligibility and enter the NFL Draft.
The video of Beckham counting out bills and then placing a wad of cash into Jefferson's right hand was posted on Twitter the morning after Monday’s championship game, as early as 7:41 a.m. Within hours, an article from The Advocate (Baton Rouge, La.) cited an unnamed LSU official who explained the money in question was fake.
And now the university tells us this:
“Information and footage reviewed since shows apparent cash may have also been given to LSU student athletes."
Never mind the issues with grammar and logic in this sentence, presented by an institution of higher learning. The words that are most damaging to the integrity of the Louisiana State University, are these: “information” and “footage reviewed.”
"Footage reviewed?" I haven’t been blessed with a ton of $100 bills in my money clip over the years, but I know what a hundy looks like. Benjamin Franklin’s face flashes right across the screen before Beckham folds the paper and slaps it into Jefferson’s palm. I saw that face before writing an article about the incident on Tuesday. No one at LSU looked at it?
"Information?" It’s clear, of course, what that means. Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow already had acknowledged during a podcast interview, conducted Tuesday morning by Barstool Sports, that the money was real. So LSU couldn’t hide behind its fiction any longer. A clip of that interview was tweeted at 1:04 p.m. ET on Wednesday. By late afternoon, LSU issued its statement acknowledging it had been in contact with the NCAA and Southeastern Conference.
Burrow was asked by the interviewers if Beckham had given him money following the game. “I’m not a student-athlete any more," Burrow said. "So I can say, ‘Yeah.’”
He could have said that when he was a student-athlete hours earlier, and it still would have been the same problem. Maybe not for him, but for LSU.
MORE: New Orleans PD issues arrest warrant for Beckham
It didn’t — doesn't — need to be a big problem. LSU compliance can still round up players and ask how much they received; explain that if they don’t donate the money to charity as “restitution,” the football program would have an issue it really didn’t need; report it all to the NCAA and then expect not much more than a requirement that the next batch of Tigers attend a compliance class.
That doesn't change the fact that it's a bad look by the university that an LSU official even thought to come up with a quickly refuted statement that the money Beckham handed out wasn't real.
Everyone, of course, is free not to like the NCAA rules that prohibit student-athletes under its jurisdiction from receiving payment for their athletic talents. Everyone is free to believe that “name, image and likeness” payments, in some form, are long overdue. But don’t forget the NCAA membership only got around to cost-of-attendance payments in 2015. They do not move their mountains quickly.
It’s curious, though, for so many to react to this episode by choosing to focus on the NCAA’s rules and declare them to be the problem here — rather than Beckham’s insistence on making this moment about himself instead of the Tigers players who fought so hard to get so good and play so well. He even carried his carrying-on into the LSU locker room, where he can be seen on video appearing to slap the behind of a Superdome police officer. On Thursday, an arrest warrant for Beckham Jr. was issued by New Orleans police on a charge of simple battery.
When an army of former Connecticut players showed up to the 2011 Final Four and celebrated their alma mater’s championship on the floor at NRG Stadium, they did not comport themselves this way. They acted like adults.
The rules against alumni gifts to former student athletes are not the most obvious in the NCAA rulebook, but they were publicized plenty when Kansas broke them in the early 2000s. They were no secret.
People are not supposed to follow only the rules they like. The idea — the ideal — is to follow them all, and to work to change those that seem inappropriate. As well, it is to deal honestly with those situations that do develop.
Not to conjure a story and hope no one catches on.
