FALLOUT FROM THE PEARL LIES

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FALLOUT FROM THE PEARL LIES


Beyond the probation, the loss of off-campus recruiting, the one year NCAA basketball tournament ban, and the other minor punishments, the Illini suffered even greater damage because of the lies of Bruce Pearl. The notoriety was immense, including pieces in The New York Times, from the Associated Press, and even broadcast into America’s living rooms by Peter Jennings on the ABC Evening News on June 15, 1990.

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."  Those are words from Sir Winston Churchill, and they aptly describe the effect of Bruce Pearl’s lies about Illinois. The false accusations were front-page news. The fact the Illini were innocent of the charges of paying thousands of dollars and cars to Deon Thomas or LaPhonso Ellis (or even Marcus Liberty or Lowell Hamilton) did not come out at all or was buried on the back of the sports page, and then at the end of a short article. Churchill also noted, “Men occasionally stumble on the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." That also happened in this case. The mass media was not interested in the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth when it came out. That wouldn’t fit into a sound byte or a newspaper column.

On top of the bad publicity, the Illini had Jamie Brandon signed to a letter of intent, and he even showed up for summer school but shortly left for LSU. Cuonzo Martin’s coach said he would have committed to the Illini but for the NCAA investigation. Juwan Howard had the Illini in his list of final eight schools, but his coach, Richard Cook noted:


“I like (Illinois head coach Lou) Henson and Collins both, but I don`t know whether I`d encourage Juwan to go there right now. If there`s any kind of serious problems, I`m sure he won`t be going there.”


The last quote came from the Chicago Tribune, and it shows how local and regional media reports were perhaps even more devastating than the national coverage. Lou Henson’s recruiting never fully recovered. Another Tribune piece “reported” the following: 


Brandon, Illinois Say Goodbye
August 04, 1990|By Barry Temkin.

“Illinois` winning streak in tapping the bountiful basketball talent supply in the Chicago Public League apparently ended Friday with the disclosure that former King star Jamie Brandon had left summer school at the university.”


From another article about Jamie Brandon -- who eventually ended up at LSU playing a supporting role to Shaquille O’Neal -- the following:

“Brandon, a 6-4, 200-pound guard, was the leading scorer and rebounder on King's 32-0 team that swept city, state and mythical national championships in 1990. He was the Sun-Times Player of the Year. A rare three-time All-State selection, he became one of only five players in state history to score more than 3,000 points in his career. … ‘I should have stayed in Champaign. That's where I really wanted to be, where my heart was," Brandon said. "But I got bad advice. I listened to the wrong people. But I was young and I made a mistake.’ "


It took Lou Henson a number of years to build momentum with the program and recruiting. He started out in the 1975-1976 season and by 1989 was at the top of his game with a Final Four team and #1 recruits wanting to wear the Orange and Blue. That was thirteen years of work and sweat down the drain because of a false accusation. Moreover, Lou Do was on a streak of eight straight NCAA Tournament appearances, a streak that was immediately broken with a two-year absence from post-season play -- one of those years directly caused by the Pearl lies and the NCAA, the other indirectly.

The cost to the University of Illinois in financial terms can only be guessed. There was the immediate impact of attorney’s fees and other expenses, but that likely pales in comparison to the lost revenue due to slower ticket sales, t-shirts, NCAA tournament revenue and the like. 

One of the consequences of the Bruce Pearl lies was the birth of the Bruce Pearl as a martyr myth. Satan cried crocodile tears about being black-balled from the coaching profession, but the fact is that he got a head coaching job only 18 months after the NCAA investigation of Illinois. This reminds me of the excuses given for the rise of Hitler:  If it wasn’t for the tough sanctions imposed in the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler would not have emerged. Of course, in preceding wars, the sanction for losing was the occupation of all territory and, in some cases, the enslavement of entire populations.

Pearl went on to leave a swath of destruction at the University of Southern Indiana. where he was found to have committed two violations during his tenure. His assistant at USI became the head coach after Pearl left for UW-Milwaukee. That assistant was later fired by USI, as the NCAA found major infractions committed by the coach and his staff -- including lying to investigators.

Pearl’s lies and cheating, which went unpunished at Iowa, again at USI and again at UW-Milwaukee, led to increased feelings of personal invulnerability and, eventually, the downfall of Satan at Tennessee. Without punishment an offender is more likely to continue to offend, usually going farther and farther with his violations. But what is even harder to define than the shady recruiting tricks and illegal activities of a single coach -- who is trying to hide his violations -- is the effect on the sport as a whole.

When one coach is seen to gain illegal recruiting advantages without punishment, other coaches are apt to take the same easy way out, and, in time, fans begin to question the game itself. “Everybody does it,” is what some will say. In fact, if you google the quote “everybody does it” along with the words “recruiting” and “basketball,” you’ll get about 96,500 results. Here's a screengrab to prove it:

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That’s disgusting and unacceptable, and there’s no doubt in my mind that Bruce Pearl inspired many of those results. Others will even defend the shameful with, “If you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying.” Pearl has had his hand in tarnishing the brand as well as being involved as the wrongful accuser in the college basketball equivalent of the Salem Witch Trials or the Duke Lacrosse Scandal.

Most importantly, Pearl’s lies unfairly tarnished the University of Illinois and good people like Lou Henson, Jimmy Collins and especially Deon Thomas. Deon Thomas did not deserve or need the unwarranted scrutiny and the hassle caused by Pearl’s willful lies. How much did it affect his basketball? Nobody knows. What would the Illini have been like with teams that included Deon Thomas, Jamie Brandon, Juwan Howard, Robert Bennett, Shelly Clark, Andy Kaufmann, Richard Keene, Kiwane Garris, Tom Michael, T.J. Wheeler and others? Thomas has indicated that he’s over Pearl, though, and by 2009, he became the Athletic Director and Men’s Basketball Coach for Lewis and Clark Community College. I do believe that Deon Thomas expertly summed up Bruce Pearl with the name "Snake."

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Jimmy Collins may have become the head basketball coach for the University of Illinois upon the retirement of “Lou Do.” Surely there can be little doubt that a highly successful recruiter and assistant coach from a Final Four team would have been in line for some major offers. Some may forget that Collins was not only an effective recruiter and assistant coach, but he was also a player on Henson’s New Mexico State Final Four team, a first-round draft pick in the NBA, and a player with the Chicago Bulls. Pearl got his head coaching position in 18 months. It took Collins 6 years.

Twenty-one NCAA Tournament appearances. 749 wins. Two Final Fours. If you just consider the number of NCAA Division One Basketball Tournament appearances, you have enough proof that Lou Henson deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. There are 308 schools playing Division One basketball that don’t have as many NCAA Tournament appearances -- in their entire history -- than Henson. Lou Do has more tourney appearances than Michigan, North Carolina State, LSU, Memphis, Boston College and DePaul to name a very few, and only two fewer than the entire history of Ohio State Buckeye basketball. He has more appearances than Oregon and Baylor and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Harvard combined.

With 749 wins, Lou Henson is 11th on the list of wins among Division One coaches all time. Now, I don’t have anything against Edgar Diddle, as I’m sure he was a good guy and an excellent coach, and he certainly deserves to be in the basketball Hall of Fame, but this pioneering Western Kentucky coach had a total of three NCAA Tournament appearances. Lou Henson has the same number of appearances to his name as the entire history of Western Kentucky Hilltopper basketball. Diddle’s one Elite Eight doesn’t stand up to Henson’s two Final Fours with two different teams.

Yet, to this day, Lou Henson has not been elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame or the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. Edgar Diddle is in both. Some final fun:



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