Remember Landon Collins’ mom? She’s a Bama fan, now…

Ch-ch-ch-changes.

Remember the lady who caused such a stir last season over her son’s commitment to Alabama? April Justin, who famously objected to his spurning of hometown favorite LSU, has had something of a change of heart. Her youngest son is Gerald Willis—a 2014 defensive end prospect who is already drawing the interest from Alabama, Florida, LSU, Oregon and others.

This time, when he puts the hat on to signify where he's going to school, he might want to hope for a better reaction from his mom. Although she caught a lot of flack for what happened, Justin is ready to do it all over again with Willis. And this time, she's pulling for the Crimson Tide.

"It's going to be crazy," Justin said. "I'm not looking forward to it, but I am looking forward to it in a sense, so [Willis] can move on. But I'm hoping that everything works out with him to be on the same team as his brother. I really would love to see them play together.

"That'd be once in a lifetime, like winning the lottery, to see them on the same team. That'd be awesome, but it's where he's going to be happy."

National signing day for 2014 is a long way away. Anything can happen. But if Landon didn’t make momma happy with his decision, maybe Gerald can?

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The Landon Collins Mom story can now be put to bed (update)

In a pretty darned good job of journalistic gumshoeing, al.com’s Izzy Gould puts the period at the end of a long and silly recruiting story. Gould got a rare interview with the mother of Landon Collins, arguably the center of the 2012 season’s most talked about recruiting story, and puts this thing to bed.

But don’t expect it to stay there. This is the SEC, and some people just don’t like to let things like this “go away.”

April Justin, Landon Collins’ mother, didn’t mince words (as if we’d expected her to after the events of the last few weeks), and essentially destroyed the notion that her son was following a girlfriend to the University of Alabama and that the only reason the girlfriend was enrolling in Tuscaloosa was because of a cushy job offered by head coach Nick Saban.

There was no job.

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Saban had pre-existing ties to the Lowery family, Justin said. He knows Victoria's mother, Annette Jackson-Lowery, a former LSU women's basketball player and a girls' basketball coach at Dutchtown where Collins and Victoria are students.

"There's accusations saying (Annette's) going to hand feed Landon to Saban and that basically my son is following her daughter, which is a lie," Justin said. "Since his junior year, when we first visited, we fell in love with the (Alabama) campus.

"Furthermore, there was an accusation saying she has a job for an internship. It's not a job. It's an intern in his office."

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How much do student internships pay these days?

While Gould’s story goes on to cite NCAA by-laws 13.2.1 and 13.2.1.1, which govern offers and inducements to prospective student-athletes and their friends and relatives, a careful reading of both indicates that you’d have to work very hard to find any rulebreaking.

By-law 13.2.1 specifically mentions benefits or inducements to relatives and friends, but it also notes that they’re not violations if “the same benefit is generally available to the institution’s prospective students or their relatives or friends or to a particular segment of the student body.” So in order for offering a non-paying internship to be a recruiting violation, it has to be unavailable to the rest of the student body.

Ok…

Gould also cites 13.2.1.1.(a), which specifically prohibits providing “an employment arrangement for a prospective student-athlete’s relatives.”

Ms. Lowery is not a relative.

This is consistent with my evaluation of the situation earlier today. A school cannot offer friends and relatives of prospects any benefit that is not also available to the student body at large. That is, if the girlfriend did get a job at the school, that job has to be available to all other students enrolled at the school.

Good luck arguing that an internship isn’t available to the student body, and good luck arguing that this is any sort of violation.

UPDATE: CapstoneReport.com has a different angle on Gould’s report. The timing of the report’s release does bring up interesting questions, and the difference between the type of reporting we get from the two al.com bureaus is worth discussion as well.

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Landon Collins’ mom suggests Alabama broke NCAA rules in his recruitment

SCROLL DOWN TO SEE HOW PEOPLE ARE GETTING THIS STORY ALL WRONG.

Alabama has won two national titles in three years and made two appearances in the SEC Championship  Game (winning one). They’ve posted a nearly unprecedented 48-6 mark since Saban’s first signing class of 2008, put four first round picks in last year’s NFL draft and are poised to do it again in the 2012 draft. But none of that matters.

If you’re an SEC rival fan, when Alabama signs top recruits it’s because they’re cheating. If you don’t believe me, go look at almost every other SEC message board. There are more black helicopters buzzing around those sites than you’ll find at Fort Rucker, where the US Army trains combat chopper pilots.

The newest yarn being spun surrounds the recruitment of standout defensive back Landon Collins, a top-ranked recruit from Geismar, Louisiana. In a live ESPN broadcast segment during the Under Armor High School Football All America Game earlier this month, Collins chose Alabama over LSU, despite the wishes of his mother.

Collins later told reporters that he’d made his decision two years ago, after an unofficial visit to the Alabama campus during the Tide’s march to the 2009 National Championship. Collins girlfriend is also attending the school on an academic scholarship, and Collins’ biological father and extended family supported the kid’s decision to play for Alabama.

In one ear and out of the other for rival fans, including Collins’ own mother.

April Justin told MomsTeam.com’s Brooke De Lench that there was something else involved, and accused Alabama of what could be a major NCAA rules violation:

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Was there anything else that didn't sit right with April? As it turned out there was. It had to do with Landon's girlfriend, Victoria. ESPN The Magazine reported about a confrontation between April and Victoria at the All-America Game after Landon's sister had urged her to stand onstage for his big announcement. April wanted only family in front of the camera. Landon's dad, Thomas, ended up having to intercede. When the cameras began rolling, there was Victoria standing directly behind Landon.

What the article didn't mention, however, was the reason April was apparently upset, which may have tipped the scales in Alabama's favor. According to April, Victoria had allegedly been offered a job to work in head coach Nick Saban's office.

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There’s some more information for your backstory. It sounds like Collins’ mom doesn’t like his girlfriend very much. But there’s more. Collins’ mother has also said that head coach Nick Saban offended her during face-to-face discussions.

But the real fireball in that quote is the allegation of a job offer. This may or may not be a violation of NCAA rules regarding inducements. A school cannot offer friends and relatives any benefit that is not also available to the student body at large or is given just as freely to the general public. That is, if the girlfriend did get a job at the school, that job has to be available to all other students enrolled at the school.

MrSEC.com, among a plethora of others, are getting this story badly wrong. That website had the following posted:

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If the allegation is true, it would appear to violate a 2010 NCAA rule put in place to prevent “package deals” for prospects and recruits.  The rule states:

“During a two-year period before a prospective student-athlete’s anticipated enrollment and a two-year period after the student-athlete’s actual enrollment, an institution shall not employ an individual associated with the prospective student-athlete in any athletics department non-coaching staff position.”

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The rule cited is actually by-law 11.4.2 and pertains specifically to men’s basketball. It has no governance over football recruiting:

11.4.2 Individual Associated with a Prospective Student-Athlete—Men’s Basketball. In men’s basketball, during a two-year period before a prospective student-athlete’s anticipated enrollment and a two-year period after the prospective student-athlete’s actual enrollment, an institution shall not employ (or enter  into a contract for future employment with) an individual associated with the prospective student-athlete in any athletics department noncoaching staff position.

Again, if Justin’s allegation is accurate (and no one has verified that it is), then this may or may not be an NCAA violation. My bet is that it isn’t—all of the boxes are checked and this one squeaks. Rival fans have been trying to hang thinly constructed stories like this on Alabama since the day Saban’s plane touched down.

Exit Question: When was the last time a Nick Saban program was cited for major NCAA recruiting violations and placed on probation? I’ll hang up and listen.

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Landon Collins’ recruitment takes another strange twist

A heated recruiting battle warmed up a little more this week. Landon Collins, the touted safety prospect from Geismar, Louisiana committed to Alabama on national television over his mother’s wishes, and video of the event went viral. Collins later told interviewers that he’d made his decision as long as two years ago and that he was solid in his non-binding verbal commitment.

But on Tuesday, Collins took an unofficial visit to the LSU campus in Baton Rouge—where his mother wants him to go. Rumors of the visit hit Twitter and message boards Wednesday, prompting media inquiries. ESPN’s Jamie Newberg sent this tweet:

That seemed to put the rumors to rest. But only a short while later, Newberg posted this to his account:

  Which of course ignited another round of Twitter fire and message board melty goodness.

BamaOnline.com later confirmed that Collins had indeed made the short trip to Baton Rouge and spoke with Les Miles and staff.

Regular readers of IBCR will remember that despite the highly publicized commitment event and Collins’ subsequent statements to reporters, coach Miles has never backed off recruiting him and even stepped close to an NCAA rules violation in saying so.

Some recruiting analysts believe LSU still has a slight to middling chance of flipping Collins and keeping him in state. However, current Tide running back Eddie Lacy—a high school friend and former teammate of Collins—is confident that the commitment will stick.

National signing day is Wednesday, February 1. Verbal commitments made before that date are non-binding.

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