| MBB/WBB St. Louis Post Dispatch: Auburn's Pearl, continually entangled in wrongdoing, proves winning cures all

Why is Bruce Pearl here?

Here in St. Louis for Saturday night’s men’s basketball game between SLU and Auburn.

Here as the eighth-year coach of the Tigers despite his program winding up on the wrong side of the FBI.

Here in college hoops, in general.

Well, because he wins, of course.

Keep that in mind when wondering if Urban Meyer will get another shot at college football.

Coaches who win always are one desperate program away from being back in the game.

Pearl won at Milwaukee. He won at Tennessee. He’s winning at Auburn, and Auburn is the kind of place that protects winners no matter the legal bill. Yes, even if it means employing a coach synonymous with slime.

Pearl’s supporters have a way of glossing over the facts beyond his record, or forgetting them altogether. They prefer to focus on his wins, on his recruiting, on his energy, on his tendency to cry when talking about his players, or his fun knack for ripping off his shirt when he’s at a football or women’s basketball game.

I observed the Pearl mind warp firsthand while covering the post-Pearl era at Tennessee. An athletics department was rocked by Pearl’s inability to run a clean program. And still there were fans who wished he would come back. He was fun. He won. Then the excuses would begin. The NCAA overstepped. Pearl got bad advice. Every program bends and breaks rules. And so on.

Pearl was slapped with a three-year show-cause penalty in 2011 for lying to NCAA investigators who were looking into his big orange recruiting violations.

But that’s old news now, like the time he was named in a recruiting violation at Milwaukee in 2004. Pearl since has flipped to a new chapter of NCAA trouble.

Pearl’s trip to Chaifetz on Saturday marked his first game back from a two-game suspension handed to him after the NCAA gave Auburn four years of probation.

Former Tigers assistant coach Chuck Person was arrested in September 2017 for accepting bribes from a financial adviser in order to influence Auburn players’ decisions on who they would hire as financial advisers once they turned pro. It turned out one adviser Person was working with happened to be a cooperating witness for the FBI during its look into college basketball corruption. This wasn’t Person getting out ahead of the changes since made in the name, image and likeness world. This was crime. Person pleaded guilty to bribery charges for steering players toward agents and advisers who paid him.

The NCAA this month finally got around to figuring out its ruling on the Auburn mess. Person got hammered with a 10-year show-cause penalty, in part because he never met with NCAA investigators. Four years of probation for the Tigers. The loss of a couple of scholarships. A small fine and a docking of a small percentage of the basketball budget.

Oh, and that baby suspension for Pearl, who turned it into an opportunity for his son, Steven, to coach the team in his absence. You could hear the cheers of celebrations echoing from the plains. Pearl pleaded ignorance and won.

The NCAA said Auburn helped its cause by self-imposing a postseason ban last season. Smart, considering the Tigers went 13-14 that season. It was almost like Pearl knew the season wasn’t going to be a good one.

Six major infractions cases came from the FBI investigation into college basketball corruption. The Auburn case was the first. Pearl’s light punishment left other rule-breaking coaches still awaiting their outcomes breathing big sighs of relief.

Pearl emerged with nothing more than bumps and bruises. Never mind that he hired Person. Never mind Pearl’s track record. Never mind the NCAA declaring Pearl’s efforts to monitor his Auburn staff were, “tardy or limited in nature.”

“These shortcomings allowed violations to go undetected,” declared the NCAA as it slapped Pearl on the wrist.

That line is quite rich for those who know the complete Pearl story, the one that dates to the days when he very much cared about how closely he believed other programs were or were not following NCAA rules.

In 1989, when Pearl was an assistant at Iowa, he secretly recorded conversations with Chicago standout Deon Thomas and ran to the NCAA with accusations of the Illini attempting to sway the player with cash and a car. Illinois did not get drilled for those specific allegations, but it did get drilled for others after the dustup, and Pearl secured his takedown along with a bad reputation. And now he’s a two-time overseer of major NCAA infractions.

What a world.

Some coaches cheat. Some turn in cheaters. The lowest of the low do both.

That guy coaching on the opponent’s sideline at Chaifetz on Saturday night is a winner, all right.

Just as much as he is a hypocrite.

 
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