Willie Lyles' former recruiting service was on payroll

Lache Seastrunk

Willie Mack Garza

Tennessee's official connection to Will Lyles was established in early 2009, when the school paid $15,000 to his employer at the time, Elite Scouting Services. It was a standard transaction between a football program in need of recruiting materials with a company based in a talent hotbed such as Florida.

Months later, an unofficial transaction involving far less money between Lyles and former UT assistant coach Willie Mack Garza is what has the NCAA re-investigating the recruiting practices of former coach Lane Kiffin and his staff.

According to Yahoo! Sports, the NCAA enforcement staff, which recently spent 22 months investigating UT's men's basketball and football programs, is taking another look at how business was conducted during Kiffin's one year with the Vols. Lyles, whose relationship with schools such as LSU and Oregon recently came under major scrutiny with the NCAA, received $1,500 from Garza to fund airfare for an unofficial recruiting trip for then-highly touted high school prospect Lache Seastrunk, according to the report.

Outside of a statement, UT is not commenting about the alleged investigation. The NCAA does not comment on potential or ongoing cases.

"We are aware of the situation as is the conference office," Tennessee associate athletic director for communications Jimmy Stanton said in Monday's statement. "We've been verbally contacted by the NCAA enforcement staff regarding a recruiting issue in 2009 related to the former coaching staff and a student-athlete who never attended Tennessee."

UT coach Derek Dooley said he had only heard about the potential major violation shortly before the Yahoo! report, and he's hoping the lack of a connection between Garza and UT's current regime protects the program from potential penalties.

"You never want anything to come out on your program that somebody might perceive as negative. But you know what, I can't change what happened," Dooley said after Tuesday's practice. "All we can deal with is make sure everybody understands that this wasn't under our watch, and it wasn't involving a coach on our staff and it doesn't involve a player that's been in our program."

Last month, 28 months after it began investigating at UT, the NCAA Committee on Infractions upheld the school's numerous self-imposed sanctions and provided no further punishments for the UT athletic department. Among the self-imposed penalties was two years of probation, which began in earnest last month.

The two major violations originally alleged against the football program did not stick. Instead, they were considered a collection of unrelated secondary violations committed by Kiffin, now the coach at Southern Cal, and his assistants. The NCAA upheld the litany of self-imposed sanctions UT instituted and did not penalize the program any further.

"I'm hoping the NCAA is going to stay consistent with what they've done, which is 'Let's target the people that make these mistakes, not the programs,' " Dooley said.

Because the alleged transaction between Lyles and Garza occurred before the Committee on Infractions' ruling in August, UT would not qualify for "repeat violator" status if it were to receive a Notice of Allegations because of this incident.

Seastrunk, who eventually signed with Oregon but has since transferred to Baylor, visited Knoxville with his mother, Evelyn, June 20-21, 2009. The visit was considered unofficial because UT did not officially fund the trip.

Prospective student-athletes are permitted to take as many as five official visits during his or her recruitment. Seastrunk took official visits to UCLA, Cal, Oregon and Southern California. UT was not in the mix for Seastrunk's signature during the final months of his recruitment.

"I'm so sick and tired of this 'Willie Lyles said this and Willie Lyles said that,' " Evelyn Seastrunk told Yahoo! "I don't care what Willie Lyles says. I don't care as long as my son is OK.

"Whatever undercover dirty stuff that they're doing, I'm pretty sure that Willie Lyles is not the only person. He's just the only one that's been caught. This is something that they've been doing forever."

Garza. a 41-year-old Texas native with 17 years of college coaching experience, followed Kiffin to Southern Cal in 2010, but abruptly resigned last month, citing "some personal issues unrelated to USC that I need to address."

Garza's name was not mentioned once in connection to the violations alleged against UT's football program in the Notice of Allegations UT received in February. Garza, along with former assistants Monte Kiffin, Ed Orgeron, James Cregg and Aaron Ausmus, interviewed with NCAA investigators on Aug. 25, 2010, according to legal documents obtained by the News Sentinel.

Lyles told Yahoo! that he provided the NCAA with receipts for the plane tickets and a handwritten receipt from MoneyGram International, which allegedly proved that Garza wired him the money. Lyles, who was fired from Elite Scouting Services in January 2010 and subsequently created his own company, Complete Scouting Services, has recently opened up to Yahoo! and the NCAA about his links to potential major violations at Oregon, LSU and now UT.

When Kiffin took over for Phillip Fulmer, UT's budget for recruiting services increased from $47,497 in 2008 to $146,489 in 2009. The Vols spent $177,697 on recruiting services in 2010, but it's unclear how many deals were already in place before Dooley took over for Kiffin.

The Vols paid Elite Scouting Services $15,000 in 2009 and $18,000 in 2010. Though exact figures were not immediately available, Stanton confirmed to the News Sentinel that UT has paid Elite Scouting Services for recruiting materials in 2011.

"There's a lot of good legitimate scouting services out there," Dooley said. "I think it's like anything. There's some guys that probably don't provide a service as it relates to scouting. Those guys to me aren't considered scouting services.

"I can't speak in particular terms, but we do a lot of quality control on what goes out of our program to make sure what's coming in is within the rules and is giving us what we need from an evaluation standpoint."

Lyles told Yahoo! that he agreed to speak to NCAA investigators on the condition they granted Seastrunk immunity from any penalties associated with the transaction.

"I wanted to make sure Lache would be fine, this isn't about him," Lyles told Yahoo! "It's the NCAA's rules and the schools not following them. During our meeting it became clear the NCAA already had knowledge of what was going on at Tennessee."

After Southern Cal's practice Tuesday, both Kiffin and Orgeron denied knowledge of Lyles' and Garza's transaction.

"All I can say on that is that the alleged incident, I had no knowledge of, or knowledge of a relationship at all," Kiffin said. "I have always been committed, wherever we've been, to doing things the right way and cooperating with the NCAA so that's all I've got on it."

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