Well, let's look at a bit of evidence before jumping off the bridge:
When a player is admitted to the school, and applies for eligibility (which all athletes essentially have to do), a 45 day window starts in which the NCAA says is basically a grace period where you can participate in team practices even without a ruling on eligibility. Once that 45 day period is up, team practices must stop for the player.
Knowing that, we just assume that the eligibility was applied for on a certain day, and we are now past the 45 day window. However, Cal said Monday on his call-in show that Big Z was part of a group of players playing the 4 and 5 in practice. You will remember this, because everybody was upset over the first part of the comment, which was playing Burks at the 3.
Now that means 1 of about 4 things. Either Cal misspoke about him participating, Cal has decided he no longer plays by NCAA rules, The kid has been cleared but not announced, or the application wasn't filed when everybody thought it was. Let's just assume he hasn't been cleared yet, and I doubt that Cal is just giving a big middle finger to the NCAA (nor do I think Mitch would allow it). So that leaves us with Cal misspeaking, which while possible, not sure what his motive would be for doing that, so I tend to think that isn't the case. And that leaves us with, his application for eligibility likely wasn't filed when everybody thought it was. Honestly, are we even sure it has ever been filed? As I would guess they skirted the rules a bit, probably let him in school on something other than an athletic scholarship (because until you have been on athletic scholarship, you don't count as an athlete), may have filed the paperwork, maybe not, and he is technically a student manager right now. The money he recieved for playing probably isn't as big of an issue as his coursework (and the fact that he has to be enrolled with a full time course load before he can be eligible).
It would be my opinion, just from looking at things from the outside, that they probably got him enrolled, but didn't have enough course work for him to be considered full time. They have probably just actually submitted the paperwork recently to apply for eligibility for the second semester, where he probably has a full course load. Probably if it is going to happen, it would happen in the next couple of weeks. As for the conspiracy that Cal just went and got a player to quiet the masses, he didn't go after Big Z til after UGO got hurt, and after Canada. He didn't even commit until August 1st. At that point, UK only had a single scholarship left anyway.
When a player is admitted to the school, and applies for eligibility (which all athletes essentially have to do), a 45 day window starts in which the NCAA says is basically a grace period where you can participate in team practices even without a ruling on eligibility. Once that 45 day period is up, team practices must stop for the player.
Knowing that, we just assume that the eligibility was applied for on a certain day, and we are now past the 45 day window. However, Cal said Monday on his call-in show that Big Z was part of a group of players playing the 4 and 5 in practice. You will remember this, because everybody was upset over the first part of the comment, which was playing Burks at the 3.
Now that means 1 of about 4 things. Either Cal misspoke about him participating, Cal has decided he no longer plays by NCAA rules, The kid has been cleared but not announced, or the application wasn't filed when everybody thought it was. Let's just assume he hasn't been cleared yet, and I doubt that Cal is just giving a big middle finger to the NCAA (nor do I think Mitch would allow it). So that leaves us with Cal misspeaking, which while possible, not sure what his motive would be for doing that, so I tend to think that isn't the case. And that leaves us with, his application for eligibility likely wasn't filed when everybody thought it was. Honestly, are we even sure it has ever been filed? As I would guess they skirted the rules a bit, probably let him in school on something other than an athletic scholarship (because until you have been on athletic scholarship, you don't count as an athlete), may have filed the paperwork, maybe not, and he is technically a student manager right now. The money he recieved for playing probably isn't as big of an issue as his coursework (and the fact that he has to be enrolled with a full time course load before he can be eligible).
It would be my opinion, just from looking at things from the outside, that they probably got him enrolled, but didn't have enough course work for him to be considered full time. They have probably just actually submitted the paperwork recently to apply for eligibility for the second semester, where he probably has a full course load. Probably if it is going to happen, it would happen in the next couple of weeks. As for the conspiracy that Cal just went and got a player to quiet the masses, he didn't go after Big Z til after UGO got hurt, and after Canada. He didn't even commit until August 1st. At that point, UK only had a single scholarship left anyway.
