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Report: Former Bruce Pearl assistant Jason Shay has been hired at North Dakota

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Earlier this month, news trickled out that former Tennessee assistant Jason Shay had received a job offer from a program in the Big Sky conference.

On Monday, that news became real, as Shay has been hired by North Dakota, according to a report from Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com. Shay had spent the past two seasons as an assistant coach at Northwest Florida State Junior College under Steve Forbes, another former Tennessee assistant that is now coaching at Wichita State.

This is relevant because both Shay and Forbes had received show-cause penalties for their role in helping to cover up the infamous Aaron Craft barbecue, in which then-head coach Bruce Pearl was photographed with Craft in his house at a time when that was against NCAA rules. A show-cause penalty is more-or-less designed to be a scarlett letter that is attached to a coach for the remainder of his career.

The NCAA has limited authority. They don’t have subpoena power and cannot force a person to tell the truth under oath. What that means is if they catch you in a lie, they are going to do everything they can to create an over-the-top punishment in an effort to derail your career. It’s an incentive, a way to make an example out of you to convince the rest of the coaching community not to lie.

The most interesting part of this process will be whether or not Pearl himself will get back into coaching when his show-cause penalty expires in August of 2014. He currently works as an analyst on ESPN.

You can find Rob on twitter @RobDauster.