It's Impossible To Hide A Forked Tounge Forever...

Keep it short and sweet this week. This one goes out to my Illini fans and alums. As the week of conference tournaments is about to commence, I find it appropriate to vocalize my gleeful joy of seeing one of the slimiest hypocrites in sports finally have his number called. The slimy hypocrite of which I speak is of course, is University of Tennesee basketball coach Bruce Pearl.

In case you haven't been following, Bruce Pearl was caught having "Impermissible contact" numerous times with a prospective student-athlete. On the surface, it's not really that juicy of a violation. I'm sure it happens all the time in college basketball actually. It's just rarely reported. That's not why this is fun for me though.

What makes this violation fun, is that Bruce Pearl - the same Bruce Pearl who for nearly three decades has comported himself as standing for integrity in college basketball while simultaneously portraying himself as a martyr for ratting out Jimmy Collins and Deon Thomas in 1989 - was given the chance to tell the truth right away about these violations, and Mister Integrity himself chose to lie about them!

Pearl and Tennessee tried to call off the NCAA Watchdogs by having the SEC impose an 8 game suspension earlier this season, but it didn't work. The NCAA has concluded their own investigation and now Pearl will have to report to the Infractions Committee on June 10, where it is presumed that he will be given an even bigger beat-down by the NCAA and should hopefully result in Pearl's firing.

This is a happy time for people like me who know Bullshit Artists when they smell them, Illini fans, Jimmy Collins and Deon Thomas. Don't get me wrong, it's hardly "justice" in any traditional sense. Matter of fact there's still plenty to be outraged about since Pearl has gotten to keep his job so far. Still, the fact that it is now officially on the NCAA record that this man has been exposed (yet again) as a snake, is worth a smile. As Will Leitch so eloquently put it :

"There are Illini fans who found the most satisfying tournament win during the Final Four year not the comeback win over Arizona, but the trouncing of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Bruce Pearl. We watched Pearl's ascension the last few years, the look-at-me faux charm, the ingratiation with ESPN personalities, the car salesman hustler, knowing that eventually, the world would see the real Bruce Pearl, the one we remember from 20-some-odd years ago, the snake. He tried to straighten up and fly right, pretend he was someone other than the slimy bullshi**er he always was, but a man can not change his nature. There's no schadenfreude for Tennessee; I feel bad for them. But we all knew this day was coming. It's Bruce Pearl, after all."

Indeed Will, it IS Bruce Pearl after all...