Facts and fiction

Talk about your worst nightmare!

Here is slap happy Illini Nation, floating alongside the most enjoyable basketball season in a lifetime, suddenly consumed in the darkest and most bitter memories. Simpson.

Deon Thomas said it best, telling the Chicago Tribune: "(Pearl) is evil. What else can you say he is?"

Commented Dave Dorr, who covered the 15 year old story for the St. Louis Post Dispatch: "It was the most underhanded thing I ever encountered."

The oversimplified nutshell is that Pearl, as an Iowa recruiter in 1988 89, brought down a Final Four program by surreptitiously taping Thomas in an admission that wholesalejerseysusa.us.com he received an offer of $80,000 and a Chevrolet Blazer from then assistant UI coach Jimmy Collins.

This was one of 12 allegations brought against Collins in a multi year ordeal that cut the Lou Henson program in half, cost the UI millions to defend and sullied the reputation of Collins. So convinced were NCAA investigators of Illinois'' guilt that Chuck Smrt, in announcing that all 12 allegations were dropped, shocked the UI clan by opining that "just because they weren''t found guilty doesn''t mean they didn''t do it."

It was all so complicated. There is no understanding without returning to the beginning.

This occurred in a period when the UI reputation was mud, Mike White resigning in the wake of football infractions and Neale Stoner forced to step down as athletic director for a series of misdemeanors. Then too, Big Ten commissioner Wayne Duke was obliged to investigate a complaint from Indiana University that the mother of Illini center Lowell Hamilton had received a job with a University www.wholesalejerseysusa.us.com of Illinois alumnus.

Duke found no infraction, but the whispering campaign emanating from Bloomington, Ind., became increasingly audible. A lot of schools, and particularly Indiana, Iowa and Notre Dame, were determined to detour Collins'' popular status with Chicago area athletes in the late 1980s.

That was the atmosphere when Cheap Jerseys Thomas came along as a superstar at Chicago Simeon. And he had given Pearl reason to believe he might sign with Iowa.

A thorough recruiter, Pearl tried to build an Iowa leaning network around Thomas. Most prominent in this regard was a chubby student, Renaldo Kyles, who had a relationship with Thomas. Telephone records show Pearl spoke with Kyles 118 times between October 1988 and May 1989, and actually brought Kyles to the Iowa campus with the apparent promise of giving him scholarship aid to serve as a basketball manager.

But Kyles'' real job was to serve as broker. He was to deliver Thomas and probably was paid to do so. Pearl called nearly every other day for an update.

Now comes the element of "street talk." In the inner city, where high school basketball digs deep into the culture, there are always scurrilous rumors and exaggerations about how much the nation''s No. 1 prep, Marcus Liberty, might receive under the table, or whether Chris Webber received a bigger payoff than Juwan Howard (he certainly did).

As with rap, it winds around like a grapevine. Proud, targeted athletes never deny such flattery. Cheating is a compliment in the parlance of inner city basketball.

When Pearl saw his recruitment of Thomas slipping, the "street talk" began to proliferate. Kyles, in constant touch with Pearl, is known to have spread the rumor of a huge Illini payoff in discussions with Thomas'' girlfriend, his teammates and others at the school. Kyles proudly stated that Thomas was getting $5,000 more than Liberty received. Cheap NFL Jerseys

Thomas'' teammate Avery Stalling, mother Joanna Johnson, grandmother Bernice McGary and all those who testified said they had no direct knowledge in the so called deal until Kyles told them.

Pearl frequently made mention of the alleged Illini offer in his telephone conversations with Thomas, and Deon lazily went along. All this was background for Pearl''s http://www.wholesalejerseysusa.us.com/ calculated decision to obtain taping equipment from the university. And the setup was in collusion with his friend from Boston College, NCAA director of enforcement Richard Hilliard, whose telephone record shows 49 calls from Pearl in an eight month period . including late night calls at the Hilliard home.

Thomas, passive to the point of almost seeming disinterested, was an easy target for Pearl''s manipulative efforts when the critical call was made on the evening of April Wholesale NFL Jerseys 9, 1989 . just a few days after the UI''s Final Four run and just as Thomas settled on Illinois as his school.

Pearl carefully led Thomas into grunted admissions, and then the zinger: "Jimmy offered you $80,000 and the Blazer, that upset you didn''t it?"

Later, Pearl: "When they offered you the money, didn''t that turn you off a little bit?"

With this going on the record, even if the covert taping was arguably illegal, the trap was sprung. And it would take months to undo it.

For his part, Thomas explained it was evening, he had homework to do, he was tired from the badgering and he would have said almost anything to get rid of the persistent Pearl.

Pearl also taped other conversations, including one with Kyles in which it was stated that Thomas wanted $80,000 because Liberty received $75,000. It was clearly staged. Pearl wanted to get the innuendoes on the record. Segments of the various tapes were edited. For example, the 14 minute conversation on April 9 had six minutes missing.

Later, in a last ditch effort, Pearl set up a strategy to prevent Thomas from enrolling at the UI. Here are the highlights of his memo: