Monday Musings: Wisconsin and B1G better have their noses clean

Happy Monday, everyone. Hope you all are having a great day to start off the week.

As usual, there’s not a shortage of Miami-Hurricanes-related tidbits to get to, so let’s hop right into it.

1) Xavier Lucas is heading to Miami. Finally.

Let’s just go ahead and get that out of the way first. The rising sophomore, whose drama everyone knows about and which I’ll get to in a second, finally is heading to Coral Gables after being held hostage by the Wisconsin Badgers for over a month.

Lucas is the #2 cornerback in the portal and a 4-star recruit in the 2024 class out of American Heritage. He appeared in 11 games for the Badgers in 2024, with 18 tackles and an interception.

He should have a great chance at earning a starting spot next fall. Yay for better players in the secondary, which I’d say Miami has done a good job of securing (or so it appears) over the last month.

2) Now, with that being said, how Wisconsin has handled this is quite poor, including their latest move.

After the NCAA told Yahoo! Sports that there is basically no transfer portal and anyone can move to another school whenever and however they want, Wisconsin put out this humdinger of a statement.

First off, good luck getting players to come to your school if you’re going to sue them or threaten them with legal action when they do what many players do at every school in the country – leave. That’s a poor look, and it’s going to make them look like a sore sport and that they don’t treat their players well.

Wisconsin’s refusal to allow Lucas to enter the portal when they were obligated to enter him under NCAA Rules also shows that they really don’t believe in following the rules in place, ironically. I’m not aware of anything that gives them the discretion to withhold their duties to enter a player into the portal just because they’re pissed he’s leaving.

If you’re curious as to what Heitner says are the problems with Wisconsin’s statement/legal position, well, here you go. No need for me to rehash it.

3) But it gets funkier. The B1G decided to stick its nose in and stand up for Wisconsin in all of this. And let me tell you, they’d better be careful here.

Here’s the thing. The Big Ten and Wisconsin just put themselves firmly in a corner with no wiggle room. If they’re going to act all holier than thou about the tampering that they allege Miami has done, then their own noses had better be cleaner than the floor of a chapel on Sunday morning. Every single member institution.

Spoiler: it’s almost certainly not.

If you want an example, look no further than former SMU QB Tanner Mordecai just two years ago, who committed to Wisconsin almost immediately after his entry into the transfer portal. Don’t tell me they called him up the second he put his name in, and then he decided on them at the snap of a finger with no prior communication. I personally don’t buy it.

And the B1G is absolutely RICH for targeting the ACC for collaboration with other conferences and developing a sustainable framework for college sports. They formed an alliance with the ACC and PAC-12, and within a year, they gutted one of said conferences by poaching two of their member institutions in USC and UCLA. The rest of the dominos fell, and Oregon and Washington would join the party later.

So don’t tell me a damned thing about things that should be respected, honored, and enforced. Not with a straight face, anyways.