Mike Jarvis Poised to Be FAU's New Coach - FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

The good news is it looks like there will be one less bland, mindless basketball analyst next season. Mike Jarvis, who has been doing color commentary for ESPN Regional Big East games for the past few years looks to be the the next coach at Florida Atlantic University. Presently the negotiations are just getting underway, but it is expected that Jarvis will be announced officially some time in the coming week.

How good it is for college basketball to have another coach with questionable ethics back in coaching is another issue ($).

The end result was there were no red flags in pursuing Jarvis. Jarvis wasn't nailed in the one NCAA issue that arose months after he left St. John's. The only thing that came out of a May 11, 2006 penalty letter was that the "former head men's basketball coach failed to monitor a financial situation of a student-athlete."

"The allegations made were unfounded and I was totally, totally cleared," Jarvis said. "There were things that I was blamed for, things that happened even though I wasn't coaching at St. John's."

The report does state: "that the former director of basketball operations claimed the former men's basketball coach supplied some of the cash during the 1999-2000 academic year but the former head men's basketball coach denied that assertion, and no allegations were made against the former head men's basketball coach by the NCAA enforcement staff related to cash payments, the committee noted in its report."

That's a very sanitized version of things from Andy Katz at ESPN.
After Mike Jarvis was fired from St. John's, Abe Keita, a former St. John's player alleged that he received about $300 a month from St. John's coaches for over 3 years.

The NCAA investigated St. John's and the coaches. Well, as well as the NCAA could with a former player and coach who refused to actually be interviewed. Interestingly enough, Andy Katz's recounting of the incident mentions that Keita didn't cooperate with the NCAA, but made no mention of the fact that Jarvis only sent written responses to the NCAA.

Of course he was. He says he was innocent through carefully crafted written responses to NCAA questions -- and the NCAA, lacking subpoena power, had no choice but to accept Jarvis' explanation.

So of course it was St. John's director of operations Alex Evans who gave former Red Storm player Abe Keita $300 a month -- for 3½ years -- for humanitarian expenses like video games and tip money at strip bars. Including a one-time donation of $2,400 for tuition fees, Keita received almost $10,000 from the St. John's coaching staff.

Evans, the director of basketball operation at St. John's under Mike Jarvis, was the only one nailed by the NCAA. The director of basketball operations is the position on a basketball coaching staff. It is also the lowest paid position.

Evans actually cooperated with the NCAA. He claimed that the money was cash each month and supplied by the coaches including Mike Jarvis. Of course it was cash, and there was no paper trail for the NCAA to follow without any cooperation from Jarvis or the other coaches.

That turned it into a "he said, he said" matter. Jarvis denied even knowing Keita was getting money and wouldn't interview with their investigators. The NCAA couldn't prove anything despite the logic issue of the lowest paid coaching assistant, living in NYC having a spare $300 each month to give to a player. The best the NCAA could do was a slap on the wrist for Jarvis with a "failure to monitor."

That might be part of the reason why Jarvis, despite a solid record and achievements at George Washington, Boston University and St. John's -- including over 350 wins, 9 NCAA Tournament appearances, and a trip to the Elite Eight -- that Jarvis did not even get a sniff from other schools for five years. The NCAA may not have been able to prove anything, but there was too much smoke for schools to ignore.