The joke is the NCAA did not do more digging.
But the problem all along has been the fact the NCAA can't subpoena anything of the Nate guy's. He technically isn't an agent, but appears to be more of a strawman. I imagine they funnelled any money through him, knowing the NCAA can't touch him.
So if the NCAA can't subpoena anything or anybody, what exactly would have been the point of digging any further?
In any of these NCAA violation cases where there is no clear evidence or individuals willing to come forward, all the parties involved have to do is to deny any wrong-doing and keep their stories straight between them, and nothing will happen. The NCAA has no power to subpoena documents that could contradict the answers given to the NCAA investigators, and they don't have to power to compel outside individuals to give any statements.
If you look back at things like the SMU death penalty, the Reggie Bush/USC incident, tOSU/Tressel incident, the only reason the NCAA was able to do anything in those cases was because some of the individuals involved talked to the NCAA and gave evidence.
The inability of the NCAA to seriously investigate these things is is never going to change unless something radical happens, like, for example, a federal law being passed that makes the payments to players prohibited by the NCAA rules actually illegal. Perhaps the law would give investigative authority to the NCAA, who could then subpoena witnesses and documents. Another thing that would have to happen would be for the professional sports leagues to institute meaningful bans on players found to have broken the NCAA rules (i.e. a current pro player found to have violated the NCAA rules is immediately banned for a given amount of time, and a college player found to have violated the rules cannot join the professional leagues for a given amount of time).
Neither of these things is likely to ever happen, so the NCAA will continue to run around with potency similar to that of a steer sent out to service the herd...
