Declaring a Lyles-free zone

Beginning right now, the Duck Stops Here is a Lyles-free zone.  Unless something genuinely significant happens in the case, we're not feeding the monster.  No more speculation on the speculation, or unanswered questions about the unanswered questions.

None of us were on the phone when Chip Kelly talked to Will Lyles, and neither was George Schroeder or John Canzano.  The NCAA will investigate and penalize, or they won't.  It's an ice cream headache to endlessly go over this and look for a scapegoat or a boogeyman.  I'm tired of smoking guns, suspicious spreadsheets, and last year's videotape.

Just about every football program in the country deals with scouting services, coaches and parents, and they all know the skills their young man has are valuable and rare.  Some have the expectation that they are going to receive an extra benefit because of their influence over that athlete, and many do.

Back in the 1950's, a quarterback named Bobby Cox left the University of Washington for Minnesota, because the Gopher boosters offered him a better deal.  A Husky star of the time, Hugh McElhenny, joked he had to take a cut in pay when he finished college and joined the San Francisco 49ers.  Pay for play and backroom recruiting deals are nothing new.  The NCAA has been alternating between looking the other way and acting shocked and outraged for 90 years.

Later on today we'll have a profile of Oregon freshman Christian French.  If you want the latest updates on the Will Lyles controversy, go to oregonlive.com or http://www2.registerguard.com/cms/index.php/duck-football/index/