Confessions of a college hoops 'slimeball'

[fred1212]

YORK, Pa. – Looking back, Al Hmiel can see that he was a “slimeball.” A liar. A cheat. A University of Cincinnati basketball coach committed to landing recruits and keeping them eligible through any available means.

He looks back with loathing.

“I questioned my integrity, where my life was going, 'cause I was living a lie,” Hmiel said. “I felt like I was a pimp or prostitute myself, selling myself for the University of Cincinnati to bring players in, and looking at moms and dads and flat-out lying. And lying to kids. And lying to their coaches, to their girlfriends or whoever was their key adviser, saying the right things that they wanted to hear.

“The truth sometimes hurts, so you didn’t tell the truth as a recruiter. You lied. ‘Trust me, I’m lying,’ was almost my motto.”

For most of his life, and in some cases for 40 years, Hmiel carried a guilty conscience and a stash of secrets arguably more damning than the infractions that earned Cincinnati a two-year NCAA probation in 1978. He admits to taking tests for prized players to keep them eligible, to steering players who were no longer wanted to hard classes in the hope they’d flunk out, to plying high school recruits with alcohol and cash, to faking Julius Erving’s signature on recruiting correspondence, to placing late-night collect calls to recruits in the name of rival coaches, to behaving, by his own admission, like a "slimeball," a "low-life crumb,"  “a snake in the grass.”

 

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Some of the ethical corners Hmiel cut are almost comical. Having procured some stationary from the (then) New York Nets, Hmiel wrote several recruits recommending that they choose Cincinnati and signed the note as “Dr. J,” for Julius Erving. If Cincinnati was competing with Indiana or North Carolina for a recruit, Hmiel might place a collect call to the player’s home in the middle of the night and say it was from coach Bobby Knight or Dean Smith. When he wearied of imposing on Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson to contact recruits, Hmiel says he would ask fellow assistant coach Mike Brown to place the calls and impersonate the Bearcats’ iconic “Big O.”

 

(the complete article at.....

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/tim-sullivan/2015/12/24/confessions-college-hoops-slimeball/77318732/