Andrew Gribble: UT hearing with NCAA figures to be intense

This was a simulation. The actors weren't even actors; they were members of the NCAA enforcement staff.

Yet when about 25 reporters, myself included, converged on the NCAA's headquarters in Indianapolis for the "Enforcement Experience" last week, it all felt so real when the third part of a four-step process, a hearing with the Committee on Infractions, was replicated. It was in the same room where Tennessee administrators, former men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl, former football coach Lane Kiffin and the other various parties associated with the 12 major violations that were levied against the institution in February's Notice of Allegations will go through the real thing next month.

That's because everyone who was acting in the simulation has witnessed a number of these previously secretive hearings. And I was informed by pretty much everyone, NCAA president Mark Emmert included, that they certainly weren't taking poetic license with the theatrics.

"Coach Smith," who was already fired from "State U" and accused of academic fraud and unethical conduct, rocked back and forth in his chair with uneasiness. "Steve Director" and the rest of the mock administrators from State U stuttered and stammered when they tried to come up with responses that would appease the relentless members of the Committee on Infractions - the judge and jury for cases of major NCAA violations.

Voices were raised, stories were examined and cross-examined, lawyers were told to hush up and let their clients speak for themselves and no one could hide behind the Fifth Amendment.

Just imagine how gripping the real thing must be.

It's quite possibly the most entertaining production the NCAA puts on, and no one - outside enforcement officials, members of the COI and the guilty parties involved - gets to see it.

The NCAA provides two valid reasons for why the hearings aren't open to reporters or broadcast on ESPN. Josephine Potuto, a former COI chair who played the part with grit in the simulation, agreed with one of the reasons, but said that was plenty enough to keep the doors closed on this must-see-TV event.

Julie Roe Lach, the NCAA's vice president of enforcement, said it doesn't put the hearings on TV because of "fundamental fairness" to the institutions and other parties involved. It wouldn't be fair to them, Roe Lach said, if the entire process was laid out to the public, resulting inevitably in the formation of negative opinions despite the fact that no actual charges have been levied yet.

Potuto dismissed that reason because real legal proceedings are televised and left open to public interpretation. But, Potuto said, the NCAA would be extremely hindered in how it investigates schools' wrongdoings if it couldn't protect the identities of those who provide on-the-record interviews throughout the course of an investigation.

The NCAA can use off-the-record information from anonymous sources to point it in the right direction of potential violations, but it can't use it as evidence to support its allegations. Therefore, it must land interviews and obtain documents from sources who might be OK with a select few knowing his or her identity, but not the entire country.

It's just one of the many differences between an actual, legal hearing and the ones the NCAA conducts once every two months.

No witnesses are called to the stand. Instead, evidence is gathered through three different channels: questions by the committee members during the hearing, documents provided in advance of the hearing, and documents and information requested by the COI during the hearing.

The NCAA's standard of proof also differs from what is necessary in legal proceedings. "Clear and convincing evidence" is typically enough for charges to stick.

"The burden of proof doesn't mean each piece of evidence has to reach that burden," Potuto said.

The road block that the fifth amendment, which protects witnesses from incriminating themselves with their own testimony, provides in real legal proceedings is non-existent to the NCAA. That made for some entertaining exchanges between Potuto and her colleague Andrea Myers, another former COI member, and the pretend lawyer for Coach Smith during the exercise.

Simulating what likely occurs at an annoyingly high level, Smith's lawyer repeatedly tried to answer questions that were directed specifically at her client. The key word is "tried," as Myers or Potuto would stop her not even 10 words into her sentence and say, with emphasis, "the question was directed at Coach Smith."

It's one of the reasons why about 80 percent of the coaches who appear at a Committee on Infractions hearing end up crying at some point during the proceedings, Myers said.

There's no wiggle room: questions can be answered the easy way or the hard way, but there's no way they'll go unanswered.

That's why UT's hearing, if it were shown to the public, would be so infinitely more entertaining than the already interesting simulation. Instead of two people from the COI throwing haymaker after haymaker in the form of probing, no-nonsense questions, there will be seven or eight doing just that in the real thing. Instead of one coach representing his personal interests against his former institution, there will be six: Pearl, Kiffin, former basketball assistants Tony Jones, Steve Forbes and Jason Shay and former football assistant David Reaves.

That promises for a long day in Indianapolis next month, one that could stretch into two if the COI isn't able to address all 12 of the major violations in one sitting. With each party making its own opening statement, responding to each allegation it is associated with, fielding relentless questions from COI members and presenting its final case in its closing statements, there's no telling how they'll fit everything in to the six-to-eight hour time frame that is typically allotted to COI hearings.

But as we've already learned, UT's violations and the subsequent aftermath were far from typical. It's fitting because what happens behind close doors at NCAA COI hearings is far from typical, too.

Andrew Gribble may be reached at 865-342-6327. Follow him at http://twitter.com/Andrew_Gribble and http://blogs.knoxnews.com/gribble