Sometime during the day Saturday, in the midst of the full slate of CFB week 2, The Oklahoman, a paper of record for OKC, dropped a story that a source had informed them of an upcoming Sports Illustrated report detailing some very shocking happenings at Oklahoma St between 2001 and 2007, a time period when Les Miles was the head coach of the Cowboys. The allegations in the piece will include:
* Coaches and boosters paying athletes, including violations ranging from paying for jobs not performed, overpaying for jobs and strictly paying players for performance.
* A environment of academic impropriety, from players not attending class to grade changing to tutors doing work for players.
* Widespread drug abuse and a drug policy that isn’t uniformly administered.
* Hostesses in the Orange Pride program providing sex to recruits.
Who knows what, if any, of this story is true. SI's track record for investigative pieces around CFB has gotten pretty shoddy lately (who can forget the Tyrann Matheiu cover story based off a party flyer Pete Thamel found in a parking lot.) Even if it is true, the NCAA doesn't deal with matters older than 4 years, so Les Miles would not be at risk of any sort of penalty if he were responsible for whatever occurred. At this moment we don't actually know if Miles is responsible for anything that may have occurred, other than the fact that he was Okie St.'s HC during the time period mentioned.
The allegations are troubling, though, hitting four major areas of scandal in CFB (Sex, Drugs, Cheating, and Payment.) Okie St has said they've already launched their own investigation and WVU, who hired an Okie St assistant that is specifically mentioned for running a "pay for performance" system, is running their own internal review of that coach. For his part, Miles flatly denied that any improprieties occurred under his watch when asked about it in the UAB postgame (3:40 mark of the below video) and he also confirmed that SI had contacted him about the piece and that he told them the same thing. We'll have to see wait and see what's in the report.