1. 6-foot-5, 300-pound lineman Elisha Shaw is considered one of the top defensive tackles in the state of Georgia. The 2014 prospect says his favorites are Alabama and Georgia but he visited Auburn on Monday. ”Auburn really moved up my list a lot after that visit,: Shaw also holds offers from Florida State, Arkansas, Mississippi State and Ohio State.

2. Alabama traditionally recruits well in the state of Georgia.  The biggest haul came in the class of 2012 when seven players from Georgia signed with the Crimson Tide.

3 Auburn’s 2013 class now looks to be complete after wide receiver Derrick Griffin announced Tuesday he would be attending Miami.  Auburn wasn’t the only SEC school after Griffin.  He had previously committed to Texas A&M.  Griffin reportedly plans to play both football and basketball at Miami.

4. With the commitment of defensive lineman Toby Johnson Tuesday, Georgia now has four of Rivals.com’s top 25 junior college players. That’s more than any other program in the country. Georgia coach Mark Richt on the JUCO additions: “It breaks it up a little bit. It’s not all freshmen. There are some guys that are at least two years into their journey through college ball.”

5. Another one of those 2013 Georgia JUCO commitments is Jonathan Rumph. The 6-foot-5 wide receiver has been compared to A.J. Green. ”I feel real confident that I can come in here and help these guys win.”

6. Yet another quarterback named Connor at South Carolina.  Connor Mitch enrolled in January.  His father, brother and sister all played college sports.

7. A rundown of some recent news involving recruiting targets at Arkansas.

8. A basketball game in Louisville that would have featured Kentucky commitment Dakari Johnson and top high school recruit Andrew Wiggins has been canceled. The game’s organizer says they couldn’t find a title sponsor to cover the costs of the event. Wiggins will take his official visit to Kentucky on February 27th.  He’s also considering Florida State, North Carolina and Kansas.

Now that the NCAA’s flawed investigation of the Miami athletic department has resulted in the mailing of a number of notices of allegations, things don’t look too darn bad for ex-Hurricane figures who’ve since moved on to the SEC.

Missouri head basketball coach Frank Haith has been hit with a failure to monitor charge by the NCAA.  But in this case that’s akin to a man on death row getting a last-second pardon from the governor.  Last month, CBSSports.com reported that Mizzou’s coach was expected to receive an unethical conduct charge.  As we wrote at the time, if the NCAA had leveled such a charge at Haith, a show-cause penalty would likely have followed… and 99.9% of the time that type of penalty results in a coach’s dismissal.

Bad news, Haith.  Bad news, Missouri.

Instead, Haith will only have to beat back a charge that he failed to promote an atmosphere of compliance while at Miami.  That’s far from receiving a clean bill of health, but it beats the hell out of a firing squad.

We may never know whether CBSSports.com’s Jeff Goodman had a bad source for his initial story or the NCAA changed its plans after the Miami investigation became a public nightmare.  But you can be sure Haith is breathing a sigh of relief either way.  And was quick to share the news last night after his Tigers upset #5 Florida in Columbia:

“Contrary to what was reported, there was no unethical conduct in my notice of allegations.  It is just an allegation, so we get a chance to defend ourselves.”

At worst, Haith might face a short suspension.  Baylor coach Scott Drew received a two-game ban for a failure-to-monitor charge last April.  In Drew’s case, Baylor self-imposed the loss of one scholarship for two seasons, a decrease in the number of official visits allowed for one year (from 12 to seven), and prohibited Drew and another assistant from making recruiting calls for two months.

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Below are listings of signees and early enrolles already in the fold for each school, unless otherwise noted.

The number beside each player is his star-rating from Rivals.com.

ALABAMA

ARKANSAS

* Committed but unsigned; His mother wants him to attend Miami, but Collins expects to sign with Arkansas by Thursday

AUBURN

K Jimmy Hutchinson will be asked to grayshirt

LSU

DT Tevin Lawson has been asked to grayshirt but will visit Kentucky this weekend

DB Jeremy Cutrer did not qualify academically and will head to a junior college or prep school

MISSISSIPPI STATE

DL Trent Simpson has been asked to grayshirt

DL Ulric Jones did not qualify academically and will head to a junior college

OLE MISS

TEXAS A&M

WR Derrick Griffin did not qualify academically and was not given a letter of intent by A&M

OL JJ Gustafson has been asked to grayshirt

LB AJ Hilliard has been removed from this list, he is transferring in directly from TCU

Offensive tackle Denver Kirkland of Miami has decided to play ball at Arkansas rather than Florida State.  Kirkland ranks as one of the top 15 tackles in the nation.  The four-star recruit is a good get for a Razorback class that has been slow to come together.

Running back Alex Collins from South Plantation High School in Plantation, Fla., has committed to Arkansas.

Collins, who visited Arkansas on Jan. 25, made his announcement live on FOX Sports South.

“I like the fact that they run the ball,” said Collins, who also cited his trust in the Razorbacks coaching staff. Collins was recruited by Arkansas head coach Bret Bielema when he was at Wisconsin.

Collins, who’s ranked the nation’s No. 13 running back by Rivals.com, chose Arkansas over Florida, Florida State, Miami and Wisconsin. He’s the 21st prospect to commit to Arkansas for the class of 2013.

The announcement from Collins was apparently met with great anticipation in Fayetteville, Ark. Bielema posted the following message on twitter shortly after Collins announced he plans to sign with the Razorbacks.

Wooooo pig sooooie!Great night to be a Razorback!

— Bret Bielema (@BretBielema) February 5, 2013

Missouri athletic director Mike Alden was out of the country last week when the NCAA announced that it had bungled parts of its investigation into the Miami athletic department.  One of the ex-Miami coaches who was reportedly on the verge of being charged with unethical conduct is current Tiger basketball coach Frank Haith.

Yesterday, for the first time, Alden addressed the NCAA’s botched investigation:

“I’d look at this nationally first.  I’ve never seen anything like that before in my tenure in college athletics.  So, I think it certainly raises lots of questions.  I appreciate the fact that the NCAA has come up and they’re addressing it.  We’ll kind of have to see how that plays out…

Based upon the conversations I heard that were taking place yesterday (during a conference attended by NCAA president Mark Emmert and a number of athletic directors)… there’s a significant amount of concern nationally relative to the integrity of the process and the transparency.  How that impacts other institutions, whether it’s us or whatever, time will tell.  We’re just going to have to continue to monitor it.”

Alden said he has no insight on when the NCAA might wrap up its sleuth work.

Whether the governing body drops the hammer on Miami, its ex-coaches and Haith remains to be seen, but you can bet there will be some serious appeals if they do.  Further, the screw-ups in the investigation could also open the door to actual court battles — can you say Jerry Tarkanian? — if things go poorly for those currently under the NCAA’s microscope.

Arkansas has received three commitments this weekend for the class of 2013.

Defensive back De’Andre Coley from Miami, athlete D.J. Dean from Newton, Texas, and defensive tackle Ke’tyrus Marks from Riviera Beach, Fla. All three prospects committed to Arkansas during their official visits to Fayetteville.

“I did my research on Fayetteville and I can see it’s a great city,” Marks told HawgSports.com. “It has a lot of corporations in it, and being that I want to major in sport management, I can get internships and things like that after football is over.

“Arkansas has the best fans, by far. Of all the schools I’ve been recruited by, Arkansas’ fans showed the most love.”

Arkansas is hoping running back Alex Collins felt the same kind of love during his official visit. The Fort Lauderdale, Fla., standout told 247Sports he plans to announce his decision on Feb. 4. He’s also considering Florida, Florida State, Miami and Wisconsin.

“I’m going to go home and sit down, really think about each school that I visited and each school that I’m looking at and try to pick based on where I feel most comfortable,” said Collins, who’s ranked the nation’s No. 1 all-purpose back by 247Sports. “I’m going to sit down, talk to my mom, talk to my coach before I make my decision. And ultimately, whatever I feel most comfortable that I can thrive academically and athletically, that’s where I’ll end up going.”

Arkansas has 16 commitments for the class of 2013.

Yesterday the NCAA admitted that some overzealous sleuths withing its ranks overstepped their bounds while investigating the University of Miami’s athletic department.  That admission has predictably led to a wave of new “Fix the NCAA!” stories from one coast to the other.

One problem: There is no simple cure-all for what ails college athletics.

There’s no bottle of Witch Hazel to drink.  Or to pour on stains.  Or to wash one’s hair with.

There’s no magic elixir.  Not even the paying of players would act as a silver bullet, yet that was the first solution kicked around firstest by the mostest.

The problem with schools paying players is that not all schools can actually afford to pay players.  And which athletes would they pay if they could?  Just the kids from revenue sports?  Get ready for lawsuits if that’s the plan.  Just men?  Get ready for even more lawsuits.

Also, if all schools were allowed to pay players X amount, there would still need to be some type of policing agency to make sure one school wasn’t paying X + Y.  If it’s legal to provide cake, someone’s gonna try to provide icing.  On that you can bank.

Another possible plan involves instituting an Olympic style system to college sports.  Andy Staples of SI.com and Jay Bilas of ESPN are proponents of that design.  As sharp as those two men are, the Olympic model would only create new problems as it solved old ones.  If boosters and businessmen were allowed to pay to players — so long as their favorite schools did not — you’d wind up with bidding wars for athletes.  And even if you hold your nose and pretend that the idea of full-scale, above-ground bidding wars doesn’t stink, you would still have to deal with problems that would be imported from the ranks of professional sports.

What happens the first time a lowly-paid athlete surprises everyone with a thousand rushing yards in a season?  Here’s guessing he’d ask for more money.  If he didn’t get that money, might he hold out just like his heroes in the pros do?  Someone eventually would.

And if you’re A-OK with hold-outs as part of the college game, what about transfers?  Let’s say it’s up to the boosters and business-owners backing a school to decide whether or not to give the hotshot tailback a raise.  And let’s say they decide not to pony up the cash he desires.  Can the player simply leave to play elsewhere?  Is there a contract between the player, the booster, and the school preventing the player from cutting a better deal with another program?  Would there be a governing body to prevent such free agency?  Or are the NCAA’s transfer rules just as outdated as its views on amateurism are said to be?

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Let’s get one thing straight right out of the gate — in college athletics, the NCAA serves as police department, prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and appellate court.  So when the NCAA messes up its own investigation into a school or coaches, well, it’s up to the NCAA to decide just how badly it messed up.

Having said that, the NCAA called a press conference today to admit that it had screwed up its investigation into the University of Miami athletic department and all those many coaches now employed elsewhere (meaning: Missouri’s Frank Haith and Alabama’s Jeff Stoutland and Joe Pannunzio).  According to a press release put out by the NCAA:

“Former NCAA enforcement staff members worked with the criminal defense attorney for Nevin Shapiro to improperly obtain information for the purposes of the NCAA investigation through a bankruptcy proceeding that did not involve the NCAA.

As it does not have subpoena power, the NCAA does not have the authority to compel testimony through procedures outside of its enforcement program.  Through bankruptcy proceeding, enforcement staff gained information for the investigation that would not have been accessible otherwise…

As it relates to the Miami investigation, the NCAA will not move forward with a Notice of Allegations until all the facts surrounding this issue are known.”

NCAA president Mark Emmert added: “I have been vocal in the past regarding the need for integrity by NCAA member schools, athletics administrators, coaches, and student-athletes.  That same commitment to integrity applies to all of us in the NCAA national office… To say the least, I am angered and saddened by this situation.  Trust and credibility are essential to our regulatory tasks.  My intent is to ensure our investigatory functions operate with integrity and are fair and consistent with out member schools, athletics staff and most importantly our student-athletes.”

The takeaway?  Everyone involved in the Miami mess might just walk thanks to a technicality.

Think of our favorite police procedural on television.  Cop X goes into a house looking for someone/something and finds evidence of a murder.  But Cop X didn’t have a proper warrant.  So the evidence discovered can’t be used in court.  And the murderer walks.

This isn’t television and none of the Miami coaches (current or former) have been accused of killing anyone, but the gist is the same.  Some NCAA investigators apparently overstepped their bounds while evidence-gathering and now they’ve compromised the NCAA’s case against Miami, Haith, Stoutland, Pannunzio or any other ex-Hurricane coach who stood to receive a notice of allegations.

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For the past week, we’ve been in a bit of an online debate with a few Missouri fans who took offense to our suggestion on the 17th that Frank Haith’s lawyer appeared to be “prepping Mizzou fans for bad news.”  In their view, the NCAA can not punish the Tiger program for violations Haith may have committed while coaching at Miami.

Well, it’s true that the NCAA isn’t going to hit Missouri with charges over any Miami mistakes.  However — and this is what those few holdouts still fail to grasp — MU can still be punished indirectly if the NCAA decides to go after Haith.  A recent SEC example: Bruce Pearl and Tennessee.

The NCAA did not drop the hammer on the Vol basketball program in 2011, as many Big Orange fans had feared.  But once it became clear Pearl was to be hit with a show-cause penalty (three years in his case), the school was effectively forced to dismiss him.  The Vol program is still trying to recover despite the fact that technically the NCAA levied more punishments on UT’s ex-coach than on UT’s program.

Yesterday, CBSSports.com’s Jeff Goodman reported that a source “close to the situation” had revealed that Haith would soon receive notice from the NCAA that he would be charged with unethical conduct and a failure to promote an atmosphere of compliance.  You know who else was hit with both of those charges?  Yep, Pearl.

In Haith’s case, the NCAA has reportedly been unable to prove that former Miami booster Nevin Shapiro gave $10,000 to Haith’s staff to pay for the services of former Hurricane DeQuan Jones.  That’s the claim made by Shapiro.  But the NCAA still intends to hit Missouri’s coach with an unethical conduct charge because it believes — and Shapiro’s mother has confirmed — that money allegedly given to Haith’s assistants for “camp money” actually went back to Shapiro as repayment for the cash he provided to ink Jones.  In addition, Haith and three aides will face punishment for providing impermissible airline travel for two Miami players and for allowing interaction between Shapiro and Hurricane recruits during their visits to Coral Gables.

Haith said last evening that he and Missouri officials are “in constant contact with the NCAA all the time about this case, (and)… it’s inappropriate for me to say anything other than just that.”

The university put out its own statement:

“The University of Missouri is aware of today’s story from CBS Sports.  The University has been in communication with the NCAA regarding their ongoing efforts related to the University of Miami investigation.  Coach Haith and the University of Missouri continue to cooperate fully.  However, we are not at liberty to comment further out of respect for the NCAA process.”

If Goodman’s source is corrrect and Haith is charged with unethical conduct and failure to promote an atmosphere of compliance, he’ll have 90 days to respond to the allegations.  A hearing would follow in the summer and then a decision would come sometime between the fall and the end of the year.

Haith’s attorney, Michael Buckner, wasn’t exactly thrilled with Goodman’s report:

“Until my client, Frank Haith, receives a notice of allegations from the NCAA, the CBSSports.com report is premature.  The NCAA’s investigation in the University of Miami enforcement case is ongoing…

It is unfortunate that CBSSports.com’s unnamed source believed violating the NCAA confidentiality rule was worthwhile.  The report did not advance anyone’s interests (except the source’s) and is making a mockery of what is supposed to be a fair process.”

Buckner went on to say that “any allegations asserted by Nevin Shapiro against my client cannot be supported.”

NCAA spokesperson Stacey Osburn has said the NCAA does “not have a comment at this time.”

Armed with all that background info, there are still two major questions in need of answering…

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