Report Might Provide More Clues on Why Joker Phillips Resigned

Yours truly has been skeptical of the notion that a bump violation cost Joker Phillips his job as the wide receivers coach at Florida. However, it turns out that what happened with Phillips might depend on your definition of "bump violation" -- and if a new Yahoo report is to be believed, we know a bit more about the incident.

Former University of Florida wide receivers coach Joker Phillips resigned this week after the NCAA received a photo of the coach sitting in a restaurant with a high school recruit during a mandated dead period in recruiting, multiple sources told Yahoo Sports. ...

Two sources told Yahoo Sports that the encounter was described to the NCAA as a violation of the "bump rule" -- a scenario in which a coach unexpectedly comes across a recruit and has an impermissible dialogue. Such an instance is considered a secondary violation by the NCAA. However, the violation can graduate to something more serious if the contact between a coach and recruit is premeditated or arranged -- such as a dinner or social gathering -- in which the coach would be deemed to be purposefully violating the recruiting dead period.

(HT: Alligator Army)

Now things start to perhaps make a little more sense. If this was not Joker Phillips running into a recruit somewhere and talking for a couple of minutes -- your "run-of-the-mill" bump violation -- and was instead a longer and / or intentional conversation that leaned more toward a major violation, that could be something that could credibly lead to Phillips leaving or being shown the door.

It worth pointing out here that we don't know what happened and, because the photo reportedly came from "an individual with ties to the Miami Hurricanes athletics program," we can probably assume that the explanation provided to the NCAA was not the one most favorable to Phillips. We might never know the complete story barring an NCAA investigation being opened, something that is highly, highly unlikely given what we know so far.

But if there were any concerns in Florida's administration that this might be more than a brief, secondary violation, that would go a lot further in explaining why Joker Phillips is no longer gainfully employed.