#FreeTonyMitchell

Today is unoffically the deadline for the NCAA to rule on basketball player Tony Mitchell's eligibility to play for the tigers this year. In case you have been living under a rock the past year here is basiclly what has went down.

The top 15 forward from Dallas Texas decided to come to Mizzou after backing out of Kansas State. He was relatively an unknown player with many major basketball programs not coming after him. Everything was great Tony was on his way to graduation and feeding the hype machine for the Mizzou program for at least a couple of years. But then this report came out of Dallas just before his graduation, claiming that his credits from his first school in Miami did not transfer and that he took make up tests. The problem with this is that he took many of the tests within the same day, even within the same hour of each other. This raised a red flag for the Dallas school district and the NCAA. The NCAA would not declare Mitchell eligible for the first semester of classes, which is a common occurrence and most fans thought he could be in for the Spring semester. The NCAA had trouble getting necessary documents from his high school in Miami which caused them to not be able to rule on the case. As they were about to rule him officially ineligible to play collegiate basketball just before the Big Monday matchup against Kansas State the school in Miami sent the University of Missouri a box with the documents the NCAA needed to really rule on the case. They also have to rule before today because of the Universities enrollment deadline, although there may be a way you could possibly backdoor him in with some special loophole.

That is a summary of the story, but who is honestly to blame for this whole situation? How can a kid with so much potential get lead down the wrong road and now may not have as bright of a future? Well, lets a look.

1. NCAA
Honestly, they are the number one thing to blame in this situation. The clearinghouse was able to rule on a Kentucky player twice and Josh Selby of kansas before they even thought about Mitchell. Which is a joke. If T-Mitch would have been trying to attend any of the "blue blood" "premiere" programs he would have at least been ruled on before November. Even if they say he is ineligible to play this season, he could potentially get into a Junior College and attempt to get an education and basketball career started. Instead, they made this kid sit and wait for an entire year because he never knew when they were going to rule. I think this is the biggest shame of all, mostly because it just wasted part of his career.


2. Frank Martin
You may be thinking what does Frank Martin have to do with Tony not being able to play. Well, as I said earlier Mitchell was originally about to play at KSU, when Martin told him to go to the school in Miami because he has connections there, then he transferred to Dallas his senior year. (What comes after this may or not be true, nothing has been confirmed or denied) When Tony committed from Martin and went to Mizzou, Frank was mad and tipped off the Dallas media on the problems that happened while Mitchell was transferring to Pinkston High in Dallas. He then had the school in Miami that he has connections to, not send in the paperwork to the NCAA to slow down the process. The story sounds believable, and I wouldn't put it past Martin to do that since he transferred inside the conference.

With about 3 minutes left in the Iowa State basketball game last saturday a "Free Tony Mitchell" chant got started in the student section, it was great. I honestly think that if he was eligible it would push the team to the next level of being a Final 4 contender. But, it doesn't look good now and all we can do is think What if? I wish the best for Tony Mitchell in the future, and I hope he is successful at whatever he does next. He will always be a Tiger. #freetonymitchell


(Extra Note: The day after this post was written, Tony Mitchell was ruled ineligible by the NCAA. By Big 12 and NCAA rules he can no longer enroll at the University of Missouri or any other Big 12 school. But since the Sun Belt Conference has a much looser rule on "partial eligibles" than he has enrolled at the University of North Texas. If Mr. Mitchell passes his classes for the next year than he will be eligible to play in the 2012 school year.)