The Sports Desk -- DJK's Exit

Been an educational day.

Nothing is as it seems. Or seemed, in this case.

Derrell Johnson-Koulianos has played his final game for the Hawkeyes. He goes out as the school's career leader in receptions and receiving yardage. He also goes out with six drug charges and a keeping a drug house charge. All misdemeanors, but all add up to one great stain.

How well can we really know these guys? How well can Kirk Ferentz know these guys?

Ferentz is fond of bringing up his conversation with Phil Savage, former GM of the Cleveland Browns. Savage visited Ferentz one fall and asked how he can give a football scholarship, roughly $100,000, to a kid without the security check that the NFL has available.

Research on character can go only so far on a college recruiting budget. Their visit was prior to the 2002 Michigan State game. The NFL spends millions on background checks and security. Savage wondered aloud to Ferentz how he could give scholarships without more than regular due diligence.

"In the NFL, they spend millions of dollars researching players that they're going to potentially recruit," Ferentz said. "They still make mistakes. But his point was, you know, it's really a crapshoot in recruiting, judging talent or all the other things."

This doesn't absolve anything, but you can never know.

Here's the

link. The bosses want to centralize the comments and pageviews.