One night about a week ago, I was on Twitter watching an exchange between Darren Rovell of ESPN and Brent Zwerneman of the San Antonio News Express. Of course, Rovell wrote a story published on August 3 that Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel had received money for multiple autographs from an autograph broker named Drew Tieman of Miami and Zwerneman covers A&M. The exchange was brought to my attention because someone noted that Rovell had made the following reply to Zwernemann.

‪@BrentZwerneman @darrenrovell Don't folo here: 'None of sources told (OTL) they saw Manziel take money' -- yet 2 brokers told Schad they paid him $7,500?

‏‪@darrenrovell ‪@BrentZwerneman all brokers pay. Didn't see handling of money.

I promptly replied back to Rovell and Zwerneman "How do you know all of them pay if you don't see any money change hands?" I followed that up with "So all of the schools that cleared athletes didn't properly investigate them since all brokers pay?"

Needless to say, Rovell didn't respond.

In one line, Rovell tweeted was a sweeping indictment of multiple stories he had written on the topic. He provided a generalization that implicates memorabilia dealers, graphers, and college players together in one fell swoop and also admits that the sources he's using didn't see Manziel take any money…the absolute heart of the accusations that he's making against Manziel that would result in NCAA sanctions against him.

But that's not the only accusation that he has made on Twitter.

First off, lets go back to his generalization that "all brokers pay". How does he know this if his sources are not watching money exchange hands? During an interview I had with a memorabilia dealer a couple of weeks ago, he noted that it's an all cash business and the graphers (the people actually going out and procuring the autographs) don't get paid until the items are authenticated. I asked him if they had those types of funds available to pay college players.

"I would say very few people would" he said. "I don't see them having that much money the way that they live".

You've got graphers like the aforementioned Tieman that have criminal records for felonies as well. As a result, most dealers aren't going to trust graphers with those types of funds in the first place. As a result, you've got people that not only can't be trusted with cash but also going to be most reliable of sources to begin with. Nonetheless, these are the people that Rovell is relying on as the basis for his investigative reporting.

Second, despite multiple articles by Rovell, we have yet to see direct evidence of any money changing hands. One of the things that we've been told that graphers may take pictures of a target signing a piece of memorabilia for authentication purposes but that's it. People typically have no reason to take pictures of a transaction unless they're a law enforcement entity seeking evidence of wrongdoing. Audio or video recordings of said transaction may not be legally permissible anyway depending on the state where the recording was made. In addition, because it's a cash business, they're not going to have records of such transactions.

Third, if you followed any recent NCAA investigations at all, you would know that what is described as direct evidence is necessary for any kind of sanctions to be levied. Law enforcement entities with their powers of acquiring evidence often result in NCAA investigations being instigated in the first place. In fact, it's virtually impossible to find recent examples of sanctions being levied at the NCAA level without the existence of a paper trail…circumstantial evidence just won't cut it. Read what Michael L. Booker of the Michael L. Booker Law Firm, a veteran of defending institutions in NCAA enforcement matters, has to say about the subject.

Q: From what I've read of previous investigations where there were violations, direct evidence, a paper trail if you will, was necessary for the NCAA to establish that violations had occurred.

A: That's true. If one of the allegations is that Manziel received money in exchange for autographs and the staff interviewed people to corroborate some evidence that money exchanged hands, there needs to be money in bank records. As in a court of law, student athletes have rights. The NCAA has to have direct evidence.

In summary, it's going to be hard for anyone to obtain evidence of violations, especially violations that would actually result in the NCAA's burden of proof being met.

Knowing all of that, why did Rovell run his piece in the first place? We can surmise that Rovell believed that once he fired his opening salvo (which contained nothing that the NCAA would consider direct evidence) that people would come forward to fill in the gaps and that if nothing else significant amounts of circumstantial evidence would accrue and perhaps eventually the bullet to his smoking gun (if it can be called that) would surface. It's not unreasonable to surmise that in a society with so many means of accumulating electronic records in this day and age, at least one piece of direct evidence could be obtained. But even then, that assumption is a long shot because no one is going to have much motivation to come forward. If Manziel doesn't play, then the value of the inventory of his sources and their means for making a living is devalued. There are also all kinds of implications regarding the IRS, etc.

It doesn't seem like a lost cause but it's certainly far from being a winning one. However, that hasn't stopped Rovell from making further accusations, this time much more specific than before. Texas A&M athletic director Eric Hyman wrote a note to members of A&M's 12th Man Foundation this past weekend concering the Manziel investigation. Hyman basically discusses what has been done to assist the Manziels in dealing with the enormous amount of scrutiny he has incurred since he won the Heisman Trophy, that A&M wants to protect its student athletes while complying with NCAA regulations, that the school won't speculate on a timeline for a resolution, and ends it with "in times like these, families come together ... And we will persevere, regardless of whatever comes our way" which certainly seems to be referencing Texas A&M rather than Manziel himself. This past Saturday, Rovell was in a conversation with one of our subscribers when he tweeted the following about the note:

@darrenrovell @Doug_Fu you should probably assume your AD didn't write that note because nothing was true

If Rovell was tweeting about why Hyman wrote the note, keep in mind that Hyman is effectively the CEO of A&M athletics and the donors are his shareholders. He has a responsibility to keep them informed as much as he can if A&M is under investigation regardless if the allegations are true or not. If he's addressing the contents of the note itself, the note really didn't specifically address the situation in terms of a timeline or even if Manziel was innocent so how could anything really be untrue about what was written in the first place? In addition, that's an astounding accusation to make against a major college program. Also, why would Rovell accuse the note of being a fabrication which apparently means that he would not believe A&M's comments about the situation (were there any to begin with). He certainly took South Carolina and USC and Louisville at their word when they released statements clearing their athletes of NCAA violations who had a significant number of autographed items on the market.

In fact, Rovell has only implicated Manziel so far even though you'll remember he tweeted that "All brokers pay". If that's the case, then shouldn't he be making similar accusations against other student athletes that have merchandise out for sale or investigating them? In addition, why is he willing to take the word of those schools as gospel when it's apparent that he won't do so for A&M?

In summary, you've got to wonder what Rovell's motivations are from beginning to end. His original story apparently has no direct evidence that the NCAA could use and he has yet to produce any, tweeting the other night that "@darrenrovell: if you were one of the sources. Think about how scared you would be." Not only that, he's made sweeping generalizations via Twitter that would appear on the surface to implicate multiple players, not just Manziel, except that there appears to be no effort on his part to investigate those players. He's followed that up with a tweet that indicates that A&M has no credibility with him regarding their investigation of Manziel although other schools' investigations don't seem to bear his same level of scrutiny.

The bottom line is this: regardless of what everyone's motivations are surrounding this story, it should be about the evidence. In the end, if there isn't any from either a journalist's standpoint or the NCAA's, there's really nothing to write about in the first place, no matter what your personal feelings are on the subject.