Blake called Austin, Thomas, Davis, and agent while Austin and Thomas trained in California before 2009 season

Let’s take a break from the cool new parking prong and look at an excellent piece from J.P. Giglio in this morning’s N & O.Â I don’t have a ton of time, so I am just going to quote an excerpt.Â The entire piece is well worth reading.

Thomas and Austin have said they went to the Proactive Sports Performance in Westlake Village, Calif. – where dozens of Wichard’s clients have trained – before the start of UNC’s training camp in August 2009.

A hotel receipt obtained by Yahoo! Sports, which financially links Austin to Wichard’s agency, shows the dates of the players’ stay in California as July 23 to Aug. 1

Between July 20 and Aug. 3, Blake’s phone records show that there were 20 calls or texts to Wichard’s cellphone, 10 to Austin’s and eight to Thomas’.

Blake was also in contact with Davis twice on July 28.

Austin said in a March 2011 interview that no one at UNC knew about the trip to California. The trip came under scrutiny during the NCAA investigation into whether players received preferential treatment, benefits or services.

“They had no reason to know,” Austin said of the trip at UNC’s pro day before the NFL draft on March 31. “I didn’t think I had to call the university and say, ‘Well, I’m going to California to go train.'”

Marvin sure was well-educated on NCAA regulations!Â He is claimingÂ had no idea he had to notify anyone that he was going to California to train at an agent’s facility on someone else’s dime?Â They must have a tremendous compliance office over there.Â Aside: will we have to vacate our 2009Â win against them?

Also, I can’t resist this quote from the article:

In addition, the phone records show that Blake contacted numbers linked to Austin and Wichard during the NCAA investigators’ initial visit to campus last July.

Yeah, I’ll bet!

Stay tuned.

28 Responses to Blake called Austin, Thomas, Davis, and agent while Austin and Thomas trained in California before 2009 season

GAWolf 06/17/2011 at 1:10 PM #

From the N&O on a very SIMILAR case….

Boyce and Johnson do make clear that Easley used a private, personal e-mail account to conduct state business.

The now-defunct address, which used the name “Nick Danger” spelled backward, was secret to all but a select group of senior advisers and associates. Johnson and Boyce said they were not aware of instances when messages from that account were plumbed in response to public records requests. While the communications directors said they primarily communicated with Easley by telephone, messages regularly went to and from that address.

“If you’re not attempting to hide your communications from the public, then why use private e-mail accounts to conduct public business? If I were going to set up a system to try to circumvent the public records law, this is how I would do it,” Stevens said.

As Easley said himself in an April 2008 interview, messages from a private account would be public records if they dealt with taxpayer business.

“This game that some people play, that ‘I conduct state business, but I’ll get a private account and it’s not public,’ No. That makes no difference at all,” he told editors and reporters in a meeting shortly before the news organizations filed suit.

During that meeting, Easley said his private e-mail account was used primarily for personal business, although he said members of his staff might sometimes send him snippets of information or key facts.

“None of it would be anything that you’d ever want or that you’d ever be required to keep,” Easley said.

Throughout Easley’s eight years as governor, scores of public records requests by The N&O and The Charlotte Observer, including a blanket request for every message Easley sent, never turned up a single message from Easley’s “Nick Danger” private account.

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/02/04/319410/aide-easley-said-kill-e-mail.html#ixzz1PYVnX44E
highstick 06/17/2011 at 4:29 PM #

You’re spot on, GAWolf. The folks that I have to work with in NC State government have asked me to send anything personal to them on their personal email and not to discuss any business on that email address. That was basically what they were instructed to do after the Easley issue.

I don’t think the one’s that I work with and email personally even open those personal accounts at work and I’m very careful not to mix business with personal talk in a State email unless it’s nothing that either of us would care if it was public, i.e. “hope your surgery went ok”…
blpack 06/17/2011 at 9:03 PM #

Who gets axed first, Butchie or Baddour?