Al Golden has the utmost respect for the NCAA

I'm tired of writing about NCAA violations, etc., and therefore won't spend very much time on this right now. But ... I mean ... WHAAAAA???

Less than one week after the University of Miami hired Al Golden as coach, members of Golden's coaching staff began using Sean "Pee Wee" Allen – a then-equipment manager and onetime right-hand man of convicted Ponzi schemer Nevin Shapiro – to circumvent NCAA rules in the recruiting of multiple Miami-area players, Yahoo! Sports has learned.

Golden, hired by Miami in mid-December 2010, had direct knowledge of Allen's improper involvement with Miami recruits, according to a former Hurricanes athletic department staffer and federal testimony given by Allen in Shapiro's bankruptcy case.

There is evidence. A lot of it. Most of it consists of phone records between Allen and various recruits and/or Miami assistants; the rest is federal testimony from the Nevin Shapiro thing. Al Golden rejects this reality and substitutes his own ...

"I have been a college football coach for more than 18 years and I am proud of -- and I stand by -- my record of compliance over that span," Golden said in a statement. "As my colleagues and players on all of my teams can attest, I believe strongly in doing things the right way with the best of intentions. ...

"The inferences and suggestions in the Yahoo! Sports story that my conduct was anything but ethical are simply false."

.... probably because the idea of stepping into an epic violations-fest and continuing said violations-fest is pretty much incomprehensible. Y U DO THAT?

The best-case scenario here is that this is Butch Davis-type stuff, by which I mean Golden was unaware that a couple of his assistant coaches were living totally outside the realm of the NCAA and using a recently fired guy as an "off-the-books recruiter" for eight months at the exact same time as a related investigation into one of the most ridiculously massive extra-benefits scandals in the history of ever. The worst-case scenario here is that this is SMU without the cash but with some benefits of various degrees. "Major violations? Meh. Continue."

Hey, remember when "death-penalty-worthy stuff" was descriptive of things like program-approved benefits/violations layered on top of previous benefits/violations rather than, like, child rape? Good times.