Sports Coverage

The Washington Post's coverage of illegitimate prep schools and the athletes who use them to gain their collegiate academic eligibility has spurred much discussion, particularly in relation to basketball players at George Washington. Assistant Managing Editor for Sports Emilio Garcia-Ruiz and staff writer Mark Schlabach were online Tuesday, March 21, at noon ET to discuss the Post's coverage of the topic.

From The Post:

A Player Rises Through the Cracks (Post, March 5)

The transcript follows.

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Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: Before we start I thought I would answer the main questions that folks usually have after a story like this: How did you get it? And why did it run when it did? Let me start by saying that high school basketball is a critical part of our coverage here at the Post. And the integrity of college recruiting has been an important part of our coverage for a long, long time. We never singled out GW when we started an investigation of prep basketball; but our reporting took us to an important story involving a local college program.

Back in December, Mark got a tip from a source that Philadelphia Lutheran was believed to be one of the most controversial high schools in the country. We decided to take that tip and some others we had received about the general state of youth basketball and commit ourselves to a year-long investigative series looking at various aspects of the sport.

As a big fan of "Raw Recruits" and a student of shoe company influence on basketball, I've always loved delving into the topic. And we have a good group of editors and reporters capable of handling it.

So we ran the first part of the series on foreign recruiters (a homage to the great Dayton Daily News series a few years back) while Mark worked on Lutheran Christian. Mark had the story reported and ready to roll for Sunday, Feb. 12. But we had believed that GW's Omar Williams (and teammate Maureece Rice and Georgetown's Marc Egerson) had gone to Lutheran but the GW media guide says he went to someplace called Celestial. At that point, we had never heard of Celestial and we decided we needed to do some follow-up reporting.

Now, Eli Saslow, who had done some of the reporting in Philadelphia, had gotten a great tip that Mark was going to pursue. Eli had been told that the Lutheran coach was giving college entrance exams at his school, and I wanted Mark to check to make sure the results had been on the up and up.

But I first asked Mark to figure out what the heck Celestial was. It took Mark and researcher Julie Tate more like three weeks to report out Omar's high school career and that involved numerous trips back and forth from Philly. I think that's remarkably quick when you consider that we needed documentation for everything he found. But we got the story in the paper on March 5.

Unfortunately, the NY Times ran the SAT info first, but we were glad to be able to report the GW piece.

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Palatka, Fla.: Was Phil Martelli used as an anonymous source in your story? Though he's been quoted as saying he doesn't know where Lutheran Christian Academy is, there are several anonymously sourced nuggets in both the NY Times and Wash. Post articles that appear to have his fingerprints all over them.

washingtonpost.com: A Player Rises Through the Cracks (Post, March 5)

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: I can assure you Martelli is not a source for this story.

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Pottsville, Pa.: Does it make a difference if players use these prep schools to get into college because once they get to college they have to take college level courses like the other college students? Also is the problem with the prep school or is the problem with the big programs like Duke, G-town, and Stanford who have high academic standards for the non-athlete but not for the athlete?

thanks.

Mark Schlabach: There are certainly several legitimate prep schools around the country, some of which have been in existence for 100 years or more. The problem is the prep schools that have popped up more recently, in the last couple of years, that are simply diploma mills and whose only purpose is to get kids eligible immediately with little academic rigor. It's a problem when kids don't legitimately become academically eligible and the schools they sign with gain a competitive advantage.

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Virginia: What exactly is the point of your articles? All the players profiled are blacks.

Mark Schlabach: With the exception of one or two of the whistle-blowers, they also were all African-Americans. Race was not an issue in the story and it's insulting to suggest that it was. The particular prep school in question was opened by an African-American coach, in an area that consisted primarily of African-American residents and he recruited African-American players. The ministers and school administrators who were concerned about the way he was "educating" his players were black, too.

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Fairfax, Va.: Those teams are no different than the "fifth year" high schools that abound. The Oak Hill Academy's, the Montrose Christian's, etc., of the area are given credence by the local press which gives these schools' publicity and rankings. This needs to stop.

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: The issue of how papers cover fifth-year schools is an interesting one. At the Post, we decided to cover teams with fifth-year seniors but the teams are not eligible to be ranked in our polls and fifth-year seniors are not eligible for all-met honors. By the way, the precise criteria we use is whether a player would be public high school eligible. We generally follow the VHSL and MPSSA guidelines. There are some fifth-year seniors who are still eligible to play in the public schools.

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Toronto, Canada: Your article seems very critical of the players at PCA and Schofield, but I'm not confident it's appropriate. These kids wanted to get to university, and as extremely talented high school players I think that they should have been allowed to. The University of Maryland program seems to have the right idea that if the college thinks they should be accepted, the NCAA certification really shouldn't be important one way or the other. Who is the NCAA to prevent individuals (of an appropriate age) from attending universities which seek them out?

washingtonpost.com: A Player Rises Through the Cracks (Post, March 5)

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: Whether you agree with NCAA rules misses the point. They exist and the members have agreed to follow them. Remember, the NCAA serves its member schools. If you disagree with NCAA rules and aren't going to follow them then take your team to AAU or some other sanctioning body.

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Silver Spring, Md.: Why did you highlight Gw, rather than including several other school and, more importantly, several other players also?Should not the thrust of the "blame" be with the Clearinghouse to check the accreditation of these "prep" schools?

Mark Schlabach: The NCAA Clearinghouse certainly does take some of the blame in the certification of players such as Omar Williams. But GW's admissions department also takes a great deal of the blame because it didn't even seek to answer simple questions like "Does this school really exist?" If a potential student-athlete's transcripts raise red flags -- and I would assume red flags include attending four different prep schools in two years -- then the school has to ask tougher questions, too. That is the policy of other colleges across the country. And in the original story about Lutheran Christian Academy, which was published two weeks before the New York Times first published anything about it, we pointed out that several of Darryl Schofield's former players were attending colleges across the country. But Omar Williams' academic path before arriving at GW was extraordinary and since he was a player at a local college, I chose to focus on him rather than some player at Siena, Hartford or somewhere else.

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Vienna, Va.: Did you find other players, in addition to the two from GW and one from Georgetown, who are playing DI ball with similar prep backgrounds?

Mark Schlabach: We spent more than two weeks trying to find all the players who played at Celestial Prep School, and they were scattered across the country. There are some other Division I college basketball teams that use prep schools. I'm working on a story on Memphis, a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, having five players from Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina. While that fact may raise issues for Coach John Calipari, it's a different issue because Laurinburg has been around for more than 100 years and has a REAL campus with REAL teachers and REAL textbooks. Celestial Prep and Lutheran Christian Academy had and still have none of that.

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Virginia: Should we be lumping Maurice Rice into the same group as Omar Williams? Rice went to that school and left soon after, correct? Did Rice end up getting his HS degree "the right" way?

Mark Schlabach: Mr. Rice left Strawberry Mansion High School without graduating, was briefly enrolled at the aforementioned Laurinburg Institute and then ended up back in his hometown of Philadelphia, where he hooked up with Mr. Schofield and was enrolled at his school for more than a year before enrolling at GW.

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Stressed in Silver Spring, Md.: Are there any reputable Washington, DC-area services to which student-athletes and parents can go to learn how the college recruiting process works and how best to negotiate it?

Thank you very much for any help you can provide!

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: Not that I know of. It really depends on the sport. Basketball for years has been the Wild Wild West of recruiting and this has been well documented in books like "Raw Recruits" and "Sole Influence." Those books point to shoe-company influence and the AAU system as being what makes basketball different from other sports. In other sports, relying on your high school coach to guide the process, assuming he/she doesn't stand to gain in any way from the kid's decision, usually works just fine.

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Vienna, Va.: There is so much blame to go around on this one. The NCAA would have done nothing about this if the media didn't break the story. They seem to worry more about making sure Rick Majarus doesn't buy some food for a player after his mother dies. GW certainly has some explaining to do. They didn't break any NCAA rules, but how does a kid get into a school without graduating from high school?!

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: The NCAA now admits the Clearinghouse was set up basically on the honor system, and some folks have taken advantage of that. Why it took the media to point that out is another question.

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New York, N.Y.: Who do you feel is at fault in these types of situations? The NCAA who is in charge of the Clearinghouse procedures, or the individual schools who take advantage of the system?

Mark Schlabach: Both. As I said earlier, the NCAA Clearinghouse system failed because it couldn't even decifer whether a prep school in Philadelphia actually existed and, worse, allowed for fraudulent test scores to be submitted without even checking with the testing agencies to determine whether they were even legitimate scores. The Clearinghouse obviously needs to be blown up and rebuilt. But again, the schools where these players enroll also have to do their own checking and not simply rely on whether a player has been certified by the Clearinghouse, especially when there are red flags and issues on transcripts.

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Washington, D.C.: I was not thrilled with the articles in The Post on this topic. However, I hope in the long run this does some good and cleans up these "prep schools". My biggest complaint was the timing of the stories. Was there any consideration to waiting until after the season?

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: You run a story like this when it is ready to be published. When the story is bulletproof. Period.

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Woodley Park, Washington, D.C.: Just wanted to say thank you for covering this. The fact that this goes on is really outrageous, and so is the fact that many people seem to be defending the practice and those that take part in it.

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: Thanks. We actually got quite a few emails supporting our decision to pursue the story. And there weren't nearly as many negative notes as I thought. I think most of our readers do get it.

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Washington, D.C.: A lot of the criticism I've seen of your article (including comments by Coach Hobbs) seems to suggest that these schools and the GW basketball program are giving a second chances to poor, inner-city students who were failed by public schools. Are most of the students at these schools from disadvantaged economic backgrounds? And if so, how can they afford to pay tuition at a private prep school?

Mark Schlabach: Lutheran Christian Academy is located in an economically poor area of Philadelphia, and Schofield, the basketball coach, targeted players from low-income homes. There are several "traditional" prep schools up and down the East Coast that have post-graduate basketball teams and other sports programs. The majority of those schools offer scholarships to players to cover tuition, room and board, etc. Obviously, I don't have a problem with Karl Hobbs and other coaches giving kids second chances if they couldn't make it in public school systems that might have failed the players. But, again, because of NCAA rules, GW gained a competitive advantage by enrolling at least one player that didn't become academically eligible in a legitimate way. That's the single most important issue in regards to the story. GW won a lot of basketball games and earned money from the NCAA tournament after Williams was admitted.

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SIVER SPRING, Md.: This has long been a touchy subject for me. I think it's horrible that USA Today and the Washington Post rank these teams as if they are regular 4 year schools. My belief is that by refusing to rank these teams, a lot of their credibility is taken from them and the subsequent lack of publicity would further undermine these "factories."

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: These schools exist because there is a large number of players who have not met NCAA requirements when they leave high school. Their job is to get kids eligible. I don't think they care so much about publicity. Do you know that for some of these schools finding even a schedule of their games was hard for us??

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Washington, D.C.: Silver Spring asked in a previous question why the article focused almost solely on GW. Accepting that the Omar Williams example was "extraordinary", what type of investigation did The Post pursue into the recruiting from these prep schools by other local colleges, such as MD, GMU, G'town, UVA, VT, etc.? If the problem of these "prep" school recruits is somewhat pervasive, I'm surprised that other schools in the area don't have players on their rosters w/similar backgrounds. To my knowledge the articles in the Post on this issue have focused on GW (w/a mention of one G'town player as well).

Mark Schlabach: Again, Lutheran Christian Academy was the worst example of a "prep school" we found in the entire country. Mr. Williams attended three schools run by Darryl Schofield, thus making him a legitimate subject for the story.

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Bowie, Md.: Is Omar Williams on track to graduate in either 4 or 5 years (many non athletes take 5 years)?

Secondly, are these prep schools serving the same purpose, perhaps, of Junior Colleges?

Mark Schlabach: GW says Mr. Williams is on track to graduate in May. Yes, these "diploma mill" prep schools are essentially taking on the roles of junior colleges, where athletes have traditionally gone to become academically eligible. The difference is it takes the majority of athletes two years to become eligible at a prep school. In the case of Lutheran Christian Academy, at least, it took no more than a few weeks or months to become eligible.

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Maryland: Are there solutions, suggestions, advice to end this problem?

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: Well, the NCAA must fix its Clearinghouse problem so that it won't be so easy to get transcripts approved. Trusting the schools to send in accurate transcripts, without even checking to see if the schools were legitimate, was foolish. I assume that many of these prep schools will lose their Clearinghouse approval, which might put them out of business. And the SAT and ACT might be less likely to let just anyone give their tests in the future. But all that said, two years from now we'll probably be writing about some new loophole that was discovered to get kids eligible.

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Atlanta, Ga.: I think the blames goes to everyone, but I think college coaches should be held accountable because they know these athletes have shaky or no academic background. You don't pursue a player without knowing his/her background. Is there any legislation/rule to hold a coach accountable?

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: The courts have done very little in this area.

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Washington, D.C.: I was most upset at the timing and placement of the article (c'mon - Sunday page 1, top of the fold?!) but my question is: why didn't The Post put the story in better perspective, i.e. look at the recruiting of prep school students at other area colleges and revisit the controversial academic and criminal backgrounds of former Georgetown players? Is The Post sports staff too intimidated by the John Thompson camp but GW is fair game for anything?

washingtonpost.com: A Player Rises Through the Cracks (Post, March 5)

Mark Schlabach: Intimidated? Hardly. We focused on Omar Williams and GW because it was a local college with a player who attended EVERY "school" started and operated by Darryl Schofield. If Williams had played at Maryland, I would have written the story. Same for George Mason, Georgetown, U-Va. or Virginia Tech. It was where my reporting led us. I wasn't out to get GW and Karl Hobbs. It is where the story went. As far as timing and placement, the story was published when it was ready after more than a month of reporting. Should we have run it the day of Selection Sunday? Should we have run it the day before the A-10 tournament? Should we have run it the day of the Colonials' first NCAA game against UNC-Wilmington? The story was published when it was ready. And I'm proud it was published on A1 above the fold, I wish all of my stories ended up there.

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Washington, D.C.: why did you choose not to include the information about how Omar has succeeded academically and personally at GW? Was that not part of the angle that you were looking for, or were you simply unaware of that fact because Omar was not allowed to comment?

Mark Schlabach: George Washington informed us, through a press release, that Mr. Williams was on track to graduate. No, they would not allow me to talk to him and Coach Hobbs and the President refused to talk to me. And it was pointed out in the story that he was on track to graduate.

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Washington, D.C.: Your reporting on this issue has been very impressive. That said, I have two questions. First, while Omar Williams' transcript may have raised red flags, is it really reasonable to expect an admissions officer to question whether a school physically exists when it has been cleared by the NCAA? Second, do you know if GW plans to rescind the scholarship offers to the two incoming Philly Lutheran recruits?

Mark Schlabach: Most schools around the country question whether the schools are legitimate. Again, student-athletes are held to a higher standard as far as admissions because there are NCAA rules in place. Schools have a lot to gain both competitively and financially. A phone call by GW was never even made. As far as the Lutheran Christian Academy recruits, we haven't been told scholarships were ever offered or rescinded.

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Washington, D.C.: "again, Lutheran Christian Academy was the worst example of a "prep school" we found"

Again, Gtown has a player from that school -- why no mention.

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: We mentioned in our story that Egerson went to Georgetown from Lutheran Christian and that Rice went to GW from there. But remember, the coach is the only full-time employee of Lutheran Christian and unless he wants to begin discussing the academic progress of those two players, getting info on them, publishable info, is very difficult. Also, Omar Williams did not go to Lutheran Christian but played for the Lutheran Christian coach at other schools. Administrators at those schools were willing to come forward and discuss what had happened there.

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Fairfax, Va.: Did you find that these players were getting into more private schools than public universities? The perception is that private schools can play by their own rules (once they comply with the NCAA) where public schools like Mason and Maryland can't. Is that perception true?

Mark Schlabach: In a perfect world, public and private schools are under the same umbrella as far as NCAA rules. Some conferences have tougher academic standards in place than the NCAA requirements, but I don't believe the A-10 is one of them.

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Arlington, Va.: Not all prep schools are alike. My son goes to one that basically is more difficult academically than Yorktown; yet requires each student to participate in two sports each school year. The program is rigorous. Please don't paint all prep schools the same. My son has become more independent and mature due to this experience.

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: Very true. We have tried to focus on the schools that have questionable academic policies only.

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Arlington, Va.: Is St. Anthony in Jersey City, NJ considered a prep school? I'm reading a book about it now (The Mircale of St. Anthony) and I'm not done yet, but it's pretty impressive. Fascinating book. Thanks.

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: I do not think it is a prep school.

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Mills: I haven't heard Hobbs' side of the story? Let me guess, "no comment". Does this hurt his career?

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: Hobbs has been very vocal defending his recruiting. Can we get a link to that piece we ran this week??

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washingtonpost.com: Hobbs Won't Sit Quietly (Post, March 16)

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Odenton, Md.: Recruiting has certainly been a dark side to major college basketball for a number of years. This series on prep schools has certainly shed light on a new aspect of recruiting.

I feel the other major problem college basketball faces is the seedy AAU scene. Does The Post have plans to cover any of the less pleasant aspects of AAU basketball?

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: Our series will continue throughout the year and indeed the AAU scene is a natural part of it, especially over the summer. As I said, it's the Wild, Wild West.

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Washington, D.C.: Why was the Philadelphia area college coach who said Omar Williams wouldn't get into his school left anonymous? The ombudsman pointed out in her column that this seemed odd.

Mark Schlabach: Because the majority of college coaches won't speak on the record about subjects like these because they fear they'll be labeled a "whistle blower" by their colleagues, which will hurt their own recruiting. As far as the Ombudsman's comments, while I certainly respect her opinion, the story was checked by nearly every editor in the building and the newspaper's attorneys. I didn't find anything wrong with quoting the coach anonymously. I guess if I'd gone to Phil Martelli, he would have commented on the record.

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Houston, Tex.: Why wasn't the fact that Williams is graduating on time in the original article on him? For such a negative story, that seems like an important piece of information ...

In fact, he is not just graduating on time, he is on the Athletic Director's Dean's List, which indicates a GPA of over 3.0.

So again, why wasn't any of that ever printed in the Post?

Also, what did you think of Ms. Howell's piece on your story?

washingtonpost.com: Deborah Howell: A Sports Story Draws Some Boos (Post, March 12)

Mark Schlabach: I reported that Mr. Williams was on track to graduate. The school wouldn't let me talk to him, so I couldn't take it any further. If I had been allowed to talk to him by GW, I might have asked, "How are you doing in school?" "What classes are you taking?" "How have you done so well?" Again, didn't get to talk to him. The fact that he's doing well in college has nothing to do with how he was admitted to GW in the first place, and how the school's basketball team gained a competitive advantage because of that.

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Washington, D.C.: To say that race was not an issue in the story is a complete disregard of the facts here. I'm not implying that the writers are racist in any way. But I do think that it is not rich white kids that go to these schools.

I am such a "rich" white kid, and I went to GW. What did I deserve to do to get in? I studied and did well on my SAT. Once I got there, it was up to me. Omar Williams got in largely by being good at basketball. And once he got there, he raised the prominence of GW more than I ever did when I was there. So why doesn't he deserve a chance, because he's from an inner city black neighborhood? Who says that I deserved to get in more than he did?

Race is the elephant in the room in this story, as is the mid-major pressure to succeed with limited recruiting budgets, as reported by the Wall St. Journal last week. To ask a blanket question about college recruiting and not discuss race (ESPECIALLY since Coach Hobbs seems to make an issue of it) does a disservice to your reporting accuracy.

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: But you were not subject to NCAA eligibility requirements when you applied. The "deserves a chance" argument is fine. Just move the school to NAIA and play by those rules if you don't like the NCAA rules. But to say that one school can get a pass on NCAA rules because a kid "deserves a chance" is like me saying I can drive as fast as I want because I don't agree with speed limit laws.

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Accra, Ghana: Did you fact check the admissions process at non-GW schools to make sure they are more rigorous when it comes to due diligence and athletes or are you just taking their word for it?

Mark Schlabach: Yes, we did. There are schools in the area that investigate questionable transcripts very closely.

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Washington, D.C.: Your article mentions that "other coaches said they would not consider pursuing him because of his academic history" but the recruiting Web site Rivals.com said he was offered scholarships by a number of schools, including LaSalle, St. Joseph's, and Villanova. Why was this not mentioned? Those are all Philadelphia area schools and yet the Philly area coach in your article was left anonymous.

Mark Schlabach: I know for a fact that two of the schools you mentioned in the Rivals.com list didn't offer Mr. Williams scholarships. You can't rely on the recruiting site lists. Those come from the players themselves, who often embellish their list of schools, or their coaches, who do the same. Schofield told me several schools were recruiting his players now, and I checked with coaches at the colleges he mentioned and it wasn't true.

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Washington, D.C.: The press release sent out saying that Omar Williams was on the academic dean's list came out before your story was published. Why was that fact not mentioned? It seems important to give some balance to it.

Mark Schlabach: I wrote he was on track to graduate. The press release said he made the dean's list, which the school has clarified to say he was on an athletic department dean's list, which is different.

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Centreville, Va.: I personally feel GW should forfeit each of their wins this season just like any other school that is caught cheating. I guarantee Hobbs and the university knew these players were questionable, but could use the clearinghouse as an escape if it ever came up. This stinks...

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: The NCAA has already declared blanket amnesty to all prep school kids who may have falsified transcripts so there will be no forfeits.

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Washington, D.C.: Has it been disclosed what degree Omar Williams is on track to graduate with?

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: I believe it's Sociology.

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Washington, D.C.: Do you think Hobbs played the race card as a last ditch attempt to justify his actions? It was very sad to hear him pontificate and to cast himself as some sort of martyr. Not only that, but he's associating himself with pioneers such as John Thompson and John Chaney to try to deflect some of the criticism. The last I checked, those two icons ran academically clean programs. I'd be insulted if I were them.

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: Our reporters who have covered Hobbs believe he is quite sincere about wanting to give kids a second chance.

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Arlington, Va.: I found the article interesting. But it seemed to me slightly unfair to focus on just one school -- George Washington. The story made it seem as though GW was an anomaly. Maybe it is, but there should have been a comparison between GW and other schools (not just in this region, but across the country). The story was valuable in what it exposes, but it "picked on" one school. Does Georgetown have a lower % of prep school students than GW? Does Maryland? What about the top teams in the country? Are all of UConns and Duke's basketball players graduates of traditional 4 year high schools? Are Coach Hobbes's recruiting styles all that different from other coaches? The article makes it seem as though GW is alone in this practice. Is that the case?

washingtonpost.com: A Player Rises Through the Cracks (Post, March 5)

Mark Schlabach: As pointed out in the stories and during this discussion, we reported that Schofield's players were at other schools across the country, such as UTEP, DePaul, Florida A&M, Hartford, Siena, etc., so those schools obviously have holes in their admissions policies, too. They might have been relying solely on the NCAA Clearinghouse, too. Schools have higher standards than GW, while some others might not.

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Bowie, Md.: It's interesting to me that the player the article focuses on (Williams) from the prep school you focus on as being much of what is wrong with recruiting, is having a successful academic career (defined by the fact that he's apparently on track to graduate)at a fairly rigorous academic institution!

Mark Schlabach: Don't know the classes he's taken at GW. Don't know how rigorous they are. He wouldn't talk to me. The GW President wouldn't talk to me. Can't report what I don't know.

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Bowie, Md.: Haven't heard anything from Foggy Bottom about whether they will continue to recruit academically ineligible students or will they stop this unfair practice. As you know, Tratchenburg "trusts coach Hobbs," so will he say one thing and continue to turn a blind eye since as they say, there's no such thing as bad PR while continuing to collect his 900K+ salary, driving out long time Foggy Bottom residents by expanding dorms, and charging the 2nd highest tuition in the US for a mediocre school?

The 10 most expensive colleges (money.cnn.com)

Mark Schlabach: Sounds like you have other issues with GW, as well. I'll be interested to see how Hobbs' next recruiting class turns out, if he's still coaching the Colonials.

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Arlington, Va.: You imply that Omar Willimas submitted falsified transcripts. Do you have evidence of this?

Mark Schlabach: We only wrote that the classes didn't exist and the school essentially didn't exist.

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Washington, D.C.: If your reporting on that Sunday was a matter of timing of checking facts, etc., what is your opinion of running the follow up, complete with charts and graphs, on the Thursday GW played in the tournament?

Mark Schlabach: Dan Steinberg wrote a story about GW Coach Karl Hobbs, who was defending his recruiting practices. He gave Coach Hobbs an opportunity to vent. He thought it was fair to point how who he had signed and where they came from.

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Munson: I can understand the need for watchdog journalism on this topic. But can you gentlemen understand why so many of us at GW didn't think the story was fair?

Omar is a great student and a great member of the community. He has always represented GW extremely well. And this is something neither of you have really commented on yet, but can you understand why we get upset that Omar gets painted with the ugly brush, yet we all wish we had twelve Omars on the team? He didn't take money (see Bradley). He didn't punch someone (see Mason). He went to crummy high schools when he was still a kid.

Sorry for spelling, I've got to run to class.

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz: Fans of a team are always going to defend their team against all kinds of criticisms. I think GW fans who think the story was unfair are making an emotional response that is quite common. The facts of our reporting remain unchallenged.

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Washington, D.C.: Emilo and Mark,

I have a problem with with a previous response. One, Omar Williams was cleared by the NCAA Clearinghouse. While admittedly, four years after the fact questions have been raised about the existence of any true educational process taking place at Lutheran, the GW admissions office would not have reason to believe in 2002 that an official high school transcript might have been fraudulent. Two, GW did not rely solely on his high school transcript for verification of his SAT score. The scores were received directly from the College Board via electronic transfer, and confirmed the entry on his official high school transcript. The University would not have known at the time at which test site the SAT's were administered, which again, four years later we learn from the College Board might be suspicious. GW has an application and review process for recruited student athletes beyond Clearinghouse certification. On the surface, Omar Williams met the requirements for acceptance. So, please explain how The George Washington University received an advantage in recruiting, and please justify the allegation that Omar Williams at anytime in his college college was ineligible to compete?

Mark Schlabach: You wrote: "The scores were received directly from the College Board via electronic transfer, and confirmed the entry on his official high school transcript." I don't know that to be fact, so obviously you're privy to information from the admissions process. Again, as I've stated several times in this discussion, shouldn't phone calls have been made to ensure the school existed? It wouldn't have taken that much time to do. Three prep schools in two years, with backloaded academic credit doesn't raise a red flag? As an academic institution, GW has a responsibility to check the academic history of an applicant to ensure its credibility and reputation, especially when it involves a student-athlete because there are NCAA rules to adhere to.

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Atlanta, Ga.: Do you think it's fair taking a coach's "I didn't recruit that player" over a player's "I was recruited by them"? I can see how both sides would have vested interests.

Mark Schlabach: Well, I know the coach who was quoted anonymously and trust him over a Web site list.

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Washington, D.C.: It has been repeated here that GW's president wouldn't speak to you and that you have no idea how rigorous GW is as an institution. Did you attempt to speak with anyone else at the 20,000-student university, the largest in DC? Anyone in the University Relations office? Sports Information? Faculty and staff? And there are numerous independent sources available with information on colleges and universities. Was this really a part of the research effort for your report?

Mark Schlabach: The focus of the story wasn't on how Williams has done at GW. It was on how he was admitted and how his prep school coach took advantage of the NCAA system and how that system failed to catch irregularities. I commend Mr. Williams for being on track to graduate. As his high school coach at Ben Franklin High School told me, Mr. Williams has obviously taken advantage of a situation he shouldn't have had.

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Washington, D.C.: What did you think of GW's performance, especially Williams' in the tournament? Did you watch?

Mark Schlabach: Was surprised they beat UNC-Wilmington, a very good team, and saw Mr. Williams make the game winner. Good for him.

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Washington, D.C.: How is the clearinghouse funded? It's separate from the NCAA correct?

Mark Schlabach: The NCAA created the NCAA Clearinghouse and then contracted its operation to a private company in Iowa City to administer it.

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Mark Schlabach: Thanks everybody for the questions. Hope we cleared up some of the issues about reporting of the piece and timing of the piece. Enjoy the rest of the NCAA tournament.

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