To put it bluntly, John Cook made a false statement at Big Ten Women's Volleyball Media Day about having offered Kayla Caffey a scholarship. No other way to say it. And seemed to lay the blame on Caffey "losing her way" after she got her Masters degree, and on NIL deals gumming things up (see full transcript, below).
1) At his media day session (see full transcript below) he said "we were fully committed to two scholarships to her over two years for her to play her super senior year."
2) He later "clarified" his answer (posted by dc155, above), saying "To clarify my Press Conference statement at Big Ten Media Days earlier today, Kayla did not have an athletic scholarship for this upcoming fall semester."
That's not "clarifying" his statement, that's correcting a falsehood.
What's so odd about the situation, is that the question from the press didn't require Cook to "go there." The complete question was "Kayla entered the transfer portal last week. How does that impact what you're going to do this season and your plans for the middle block position?"
This was a total softball question, that Cook could have answered by saying something like "Good question. FIrst, we're so grateful for Kayla's contributions to the program, both on and off the court, and we wish her well in the future. As to your question, we've got three very talented middle blockers, and they'll be competing for playing time, just as our players do every season. We're comfortable with all three and look forward to seeing them in practice."
Instead, we got this very detailed, but significantly fabricated, story from Cook at the B1G media day:
Q: Kayla entered the transfer portal last week. How does that impact what you're going to do this season and your plans for the middle block position?COACH COOK: We still have, last I checked, we still have three middle blockers. They'll compete just like they were going to compete before.
And I think I should probably just clarify how all this went because this is a very unusual situation. I've read some of the things that have been written. Everybody thinks they know what's going on. I'll just elaborate a little bit on what unfolded.
In November I asked Kayla do you want to come back for your super senior year? And she said yes. And I want to get a second master's. She finished the season. Started in the spring. And our compliance people went through months and weeks of work to get her a seventh year. It was not a done deal. It was very complicated. They worked very hard to get that passed.
They also hit us with a year penalty if she was going to play at Nebraska that we could take this year or next year. So we continued to have discussions. I double checked with Kayla -- are you sure you want to do this because it cost us a lot. And we were fully committed to two scholarships to her over two years for her to play her super senior year.
And I only asked two things from her on that. One is to be a super senior, meaning to set an example, be a role model. And two, I asked her why she wanted to come back and she said I want to help us win a national championship; we were so close.
Well, so things continued to unfold. We made a couple of appeals. Some things changed. But by May it was all worked out and the ball was in her court. As far as I knew she was coming back. I was awaiting for her to do her announcements, which all these transfers do, because I think -- it's like going through recruiting again. We were waiting for that. It never happened.
Last week she said she was done. That's about all I know. But it's made me think a lot about a lot of things. And I'll tell you, first of all, I learned about super seniors. There's only two reasons they should come back. One, to finish unfinished business; and, two, to get a master's degree. And she already has a master's degree. And I think once she lost that motivation to get that second degree, I think they lose their way on why they're at a university. And at that point it's probably time to go play pro if you want to go play pro.
The other thing that really has made me realize is what NIL has done to college sports and these athletes because now you see who is transferring and who is leaving. And I could go through several examples. It's all about where can I get the next best deal.
And this has infiltrated college sports. And it's a sad deal. And so it just takes me back to a scene in the movie about the 1980 U.S. hockey team when their coach asked them, are you playing for the team on -- the name on the front of your jersey or are you playing for the name on the back of your jersey.
All I know is at Nebraska volleyball I want kids we're going to recruit kids that want to play for Nebraska and that's what they're here for and that's what they want. If there's things that come along with that, with NIL and other opportunities, great. But that's the most important thing. I hope I've got a group of kids -- we start next Tuesday -- that they're playing for the name on the front of their jersey.
Q. I think Kayla made an Instagram post saying the coach said she would not have a scholarship available this fall?COACH COOK: I just told you we were fully committed to her financial situation for two years. She had everything covered.
Q. I understand when you said you were under penalty, she would count double scholarship or --COACH COOK: That is correct.
Q. She would count for -- if she would have come back she would have counted as two scholarship players?COACH COOK: That's correct.
Q. In the future you would lose a scholarship for four years?COACH COOK: No, just for one year, one year penalty. Now, if you want to go into why that happened, we don't have enough time today. But that's an NCAA rule. They basically hit us with that because she's a very unusual situation, and it really penalized her to get her master's is what happened. She should never have graduated with her master's in January, which was originally her plan when she came to Nebraska. That really messed things up. It would have been better to tell her, don't -- but we didn't know at the time, because it goes through a process and it happened in the spring.
