Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

If only the University of Arkansas was as open about Patrick Beverley's academic record as Mr. Beverley has been about it, then we'd better understand how deep in the muck this Razorback basketball program truly is.

Patrick Beverley, interviewed by a site that is following the upcoming NBA Draft and the likely selections, readily claims now that not only did he turn in a class paper written by someone else at the UA, he took the fall for other teammates who did the same thing.

Recall the steps by which we've gotten to this admission:

—Arkansas announced in the middle of last summer that Patrick Beverley was ineligible for basketball for a year, saying that he had suspended from the university, then was unwilling to explain the situation further, citing as usual the handy, good-ol' student privacy laws (a Congressional act, the Family Rights and Privacy Act, signed into law in the Vietnam-era draft years to protect college students from government intrusion into their academic record; in recent years, athletic departments including the UA's have also leaned on HIPPA to not disclose complete information on player injuries).

—Patrick Beverley told FoxSports.com last summer that what he had done was an NCAA violation but not an academic problem. Beverley apparently meant he was not flunking out when the UA suspended him. He was just cheating. They kick every Joe College out of school for at least a year for that.

—Beverley soon moved away from the "NCAA violation" explanation in another interview to say that his problem involved a class paper. The UA again kept quiet on the matter.

—Beverley now comes even cleaner with the allegation that he and other teammates benefited from work by class-paper writers. The UA, which in essence has been accused by a former player of having academic papers written for several players, stays zipped on the matter again, even though Beverley is no longer a student.

Here's betting that while the UA isn't telling the public anything, someone at the university has made quick effort to reach Beverley and suggest a zip-it strategy from here on. There's no telling what Patrick Beverley might tell about his time at the university, his studies, even his recruiting by the Stan Heath staff, if given the chance in the right setting.

As for now, Arkansas' basketball program has a black eye that only appears to be worsening. As Chris Bahn writes in this month's print issue, 15 players have left the program in various forms (exhausted eligibility, transferred, quit, ruled ineligible) since John Pelphrey arrived.

That doesn't mean it's Pelphrey's fault, either. It doesn't mean this all falls at the feet of his predecessor, Stan Heath, either. It doesn't mean that all would be well had Nolan Richardson not been canned in 2002 and replaced by Heath.

But it makes one understand better why the Arkansas head coaching search in 2007 finally found its way to Creighton's Dana Altman after a handful of bigger names said "no," and then why Altman was already out the door in 25 hours. He likely accepted the job from Frank Broyles, then started his due diligence and had dinner with former chancellor John White and realized he was walking into a potential cesspool.

The upside of the job -- that an experienced and decently talented team at a program with strong tradition awaited the new coach -- was offset by the problems lurking underneath. Some of that sewage bubbled to the top before and during this recently completed disaster of a season.