One of these days I hope we can get back to football. I don’t think that will be any time soon, though.
Tonight a few developments came to light in the Nevin Shapiro saga. Former running back Tyrone Moss, interviewed by WPLG, said he was misquoted by Yahoo!. The only problem with that; Yahoo! claims to have audio of Moss giving them the quotes and information they used in the story. Checkmate.
I can’t imagine being Moss right now. The hate mail, phone calls, dirty looks and whatever else has some his way since the story broke. However I don’t feel bad for what will come from the lying. Based on the latest denial, Moss either lied to Yahoo! or to WPLG – there can’t be two truths. Is someone more likely to lie about taking $1,000 or lie about saying they took the money?
We also learned that Shapiro might’ve been involved in Miami’s coaching search back in 2006. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ran a story in April 2007 that detailed the phone records of then-Razorbacks head coach Houston Nutt. According to the article, Nutt called Shapiro on December 7th, 2006 and Shapiro called him back. The two had a thirty-minute conversation. Nutt also placed four phone calls to Miami’s deputy AD Tony Hernandez.
Since UM was in the middle of a coaching search, it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for a deputy athletic director to have conversations with potential candidates, but Shapiro?
I understand that in the world of college football, intermediaries are often used to make contact with coaching candidates. I’m not sure if that’s legal or now, but that occurrence in itself might show that Shapiro was more involved in the athletic department than we’ve been led to believe.
This story gets bigger by the day and that’s not a good thing for UM.
There’s no media access to the football to team until Thursday morning and when the pending tropical storm / hurricane, we may not get back down there for a week. The team scrimmages Monday and the depth chart will be released by Wednesday.
All of the football stuff may get a note or two in the paper, as the sport world will continue its fixation on Nevingate. The local media is trying to play catch up with Yahoo! and with a fleet of journalists on the story, there’s bound to be a plethora of new information.
I’m hoping some of it exonerates UM, but I’m fearful it will only give Shapiro’s story more credibility.
Someday we’ll get back to football.