Tiny Gallon speaks about the NCAA investigation

We've all heard about the allegations involving Tiny Gallon and Oklahoma.

In short, Gallon was wired $3,000 by a financial adviser in Florida. Former Oklahoma assistant coach Oronde Taliaferro's phone records show 41 calls and 25 texts between the two. Generally in situations like this, where there's smoke, there's fire, and there is enough smoke here for Gregg Doyel to call for Oklahoma's basketball program to get the death penalty.

Tiny Gallon finally spoke about the allegations he is facing.
(photo credit: NewsOK)

Gallon hadn't commented on the allegations until today, when he spoke with Adam Zagoria.

"Oak Hill wouldn't release my transcript under no circumstances and my mother had to do what she had to do," Gallon told Zagoria. "It wasn't an agent, it was a financial adviser. She got the money from him, got my transcript out of Oak Hill Academy. I got a single mother. When she got the money, she paid the financial adviser back through my freshmen year."

"Oak Hill gave my mother a bill for $3,000," Gallon said. "Until she paid, I couldn't go to school. It wasn't like I was getting the money and paying it to everybody. Three thousand dollars, that's nothing to get my transcript ... She paid the man back over the course of my freshman year."

Gallons also said that the scandal was the main reason he decided to leave school after his freshman season, in large part because of how long it was taking the NCAA to respond to him.

Gallon makes it seem as if this was a loan, which is very well may have been. But from what he is saying, it doesn't seem like this was anything official; I doubt his mother would have been able to get a loan via any legitimate means if she had accrued $3,000 in tuition payments. (According to a Zagoria source, Gallon's mother didn't pay her tuition bills all year long.)

And if this was simply a loan, there's no way that the relationship and phone calls between Taliaferro and the financial advisor were mutually exclusive events from the "loan". Its not a leap of faith to assume that Taliaferro orchestrated the money exchanging hands.

Regardless of what that money was used for, an assistant coach going through back channels to get $3,000 into a recruit's bank account is a pretty serious violation, even if it was done with the best of intentions.

As far as the NCAA investigation, Gallon said "I'm really not sure but shouldn't nothing happen."

I'm going to go ahead and disagree with you there, Tiny.