The story of the day has been Enes Kanter and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Pete Thamel broke the news (at least to the general public, we believe UK knew about this) and now the entire country has taken notice. This amount of attention is not going to make it easy for UK or the NCAA.
These types of accusation will mean the NCAA will need to give some type of explanation if they decide to rule Kanter eligible to play at UK. In fact, some believe UK will need to travel to Turkey in order to prove Kanter’s eligibility.
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Here’s an excerpt from a recent article from Andy Katz. He also points out how the NCAA has made rulings recently regarding players from Turkey…
[QUOTE]Sandy Bell, Kentucky’s associate athletic director in charge of compliance, and a representative of the NCAA’s amateurism department may need to go to Istanbul and meet with Karakas if Kanter is to gain eligibility for this season, the compliance officer told Katz.
According to the compliance officer, the burden of proof is on Kentucky to prove Kanter received only actual and necessary expenses after Kanter signed with the Wildcats over Washington last year. Those expenses can be food, travel expenses for practices and competition as well as housing. Where this can get dicey is that Kanter was only 14 at the time he started with the club team, and housing for his family may have to have been included. The NCAA could determine that his family getting rent paid for by a club team could be viewed as him using his skill to gain an advantage for his family.
The NCAA has ruled on the amateur status of Turkish players differently recently. Former NC State player Engin Atsur received a three-game suspension for playing in six games for a club team in Turkey. Last season, West Virginia’s [URL=”http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/player/profile?playerId=45966″]Deniz Kilicli[/URL] was suspended for 20 games for a similar amateurism offense. But that was under a previous rule when there was a two-games-to-one penalty that no longer is applicable. Now the issue deals with expenses more than anything else.
Herb Sendek, who was Atsur’s coach at NC State and is now the head coach at Arizona State, said that the school dealt entirely with Atsur’s family and didn’t get any resistance from a Turkish club team. He said the process was clean and that the Atsurs fully understood the NCAA rules since they had an older son go through the process.
[/QUOTE]You can [URL=”http://proxy.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=5544773″]read the entire article here.. [/URL]
