GW, I appreciate the thoughtful analysis in your article. You may be right that the NCAA considered those reasons. I just don't agree that they are valid reasons, or justify the decision.
Sure there is some speculation involved, but we know he finished summer school at FIU as Minnesota apparently had him do, we know Minnesota was happy with the results of that (an official even quoted as saying "It is going to happen"), and we know he was a good enough student and making sufficient progress to be accepted into the U of M -- a far better school academically than FIU or Louisville. The NCAA has no place second-guessing U of M admissions. This is not SEC country. We also know he's had hard luck throughout his college career with injuries, which basically caused him to miss a substantial amt of his eligible playing time and to leave Louisville. It would be ridiculous for anyone to conclude he voluntarily left Louisville. At best you can conclude he wanted more PT somewhere and that FIU with Pitino was the best fallback; at worst you can conclude (probably rightly) that he was more or less pushed out. And finally we know that in his final year of eligibility, his school became ineligible for the tournament.
To me, if there is an APR waiver for final year of eligibility, you have to apply it here, period. This is more than enough to make the decision.
I think the decision is more about the NCAA getting zillions of waiver requests and needing to deny some, about ignorance, and possibly about the timing of this request coming right before school starts. It also reflects a discretionary system that might work fine in simple, low profile cases or non-revenue sports, but is strained and arbitrary when it involves high stakes sports and players, and more complicated situations.
