The Oregon Ducks, who have a darn cute mascot, have been under NCAA investigation since late this winter for sending money to notorious street agents like Will Lyles, who's also been connected to a number of SEC teams. The most wonderful development -- or distressing, for Puddles fans -- was the Tuesday night revelation that Oregon football paid $25,000 for a 2011 national recruiting profile that was composed of reports on almost entirely Texas players from 2008, 2009 and 2010, most of whom didn't go on to play FBS football.
The report included a player who had been deceased for several months and a player who played for the Auburn Tigers against Oregon in the BCS title game.
Nosa Eguae played his first season of Auburn football in 2009. He then played his second in 2010. In early 2010, Oregon paid a lot of money to a guy with a bad reputation for insights on Eguae's high school career so that they could decide whether to recruit Eguae out of high school or not.
The only two explanations: Oregon was hoodwinked by a guy who's pretty good at hoodwinking, or Oregon found a way to slide a street agent money for access to players and didn't do a good enough job of making sure the cover story was up to date.