Chris Porter's story is a sad one. It is a tale of a star basketball player, a destitute mother, a parasitic agent, a screwed up legislating body known as the NCAA and an athletic underground subculture swarming with more roundball pimps than your average red-light district. It is a story of what's wrong with college basketball.
Our tragic yarn unfolded Monday afternoon when Porter - perhaps the best basketballer at Auburn since Charles Barkley - admitted to pocketing $2,500 cash from an agent. The university immediately suspended him, hoping an in-house ruling would lead the NCAA to reinstate the Tiger star sooner rather than later.
However, before the forward had a chance to explain himself, every college basketball savant suddenly became a moralist. The pundits condemned him as just another skywalker who couldn't resist temptation, just another ignorant jock without a clue.
But to quote radio newsman Paul Harvey, who spits out hackneyed clichés like a tennis ball machine: "Now America, it's time for the rest of the story."
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Belittle Porter, chide him as greedy or foolish or both, but at least consider the adverse circumstances he faces.
Porter didn't accept $2,500 from an agent to go on a Fubu-buying binge. He didn't pocket a stack of greenbacks to tint the windows of his Four Runner.
Porter took the money so his mother Emily wouldn't be evicted from her Abbeville, Ala., home. Porter chose his mother over basketball, and for that decision, he paid a dear, dear price.
But Porter's blunder isn't quite that simple. Behind his squandered senior year lies an avaricious agent who cornered the Tiger stud at his most vulnerable time, all of which makes Auburn Coach Cliff Ellis want to puke his guts out.
"I'm sick of people who want to prey on young people and hit them at a weak moment," the Tiger head man fumed in an Associated Press article.
Porter couldn't have been hit at a weaker moment, proving once more that, just like us, these so-called invincible athletes have their fair share of flaws, like caring too much about their mothers.
So who was this mysterious agent? Well, no one is exactly sure, and therein lies perhaps the most distressing problem of all: We can't identify these vermin, these low-balling, integrity-undermining, egomaniacal middlemen who prey on our young people like ravenous boars.
The NCAA insists that it makes itself crystal clear regarding amateur contact with boosters and agents: Any interaction is a reprehensible no-no, and punishment ranges from the gentle slap on the athlete's wrist to the more painful slitting of it.
But it's just not that simple. Boosters and agents aren't like limousine drivers; they don't wrap huge cardboard signs around their necks that bellow, "Look at me, I'm an agent/booster and I'm here for Chris Porter."
In the case of UCLA star JaRon Rush, who was suspended by the NCAA for accepting financial gifts from his AAU basketball coach, the culprit behind such sleazy dealings doubled as Rush's mentor and family friend.
Memo to the NCAA: Clarify your overriding axiom. If not, then change it. Either way, let the Chris Porters of the world know who they can trust.
Am I defending Porter for taking money from an agent? No. Amateur-agent encounters are the athletic equivalent of heresy, and Porter knows that fact all too well. But behind one honest mistake lies the rest of the story, a tale inundated with convoluted statutes and cutthroat businessmen.
It's time to tell that story, too.
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