This Week’s Man Crush: Ben Bolch, L.A. Times

Listen up folks, we’ve got the next Bob Woodward breaking onto the scene. Ben Bolch, sports writer and resident douche bag for the Los Angeles Times is hot on the case of multiple, oh so many, recruiting violations of the Washington Huskies football coaching staff.

We don’t know if Bolch has a source on deep background, ala Deep Throat, but Benny doesn’t just report the news. He IS the news. As you may have heard, Bolch was the reporter who wouldn’t go away while rookie head coach Steve Sarkisian and defensive coordinator Nick Holt were on a recruiting visit in L.A.

Details have emerged that outline what happened. Sarkisian and Holt met recruits James Boyd and Delvon Purvis at a neighborhood hair salon where their high school football coach showed up with high school junior Deshawn Beck. Bolch was interviewing Boyd and Purvis and then wouldn’t go away when the two coaches went to a nearby coffee shop with the kids and their coach to talk.

"I didn't exactly hide my presence - we met and shook hands, and they didn't seem to mind me tagging along to the coffee house, but we didn't really engage each other beyond that,” Bolch said. “I just sat at the table and observed everything going on."

Having a reporter present while you’re recruiting a kid is a violation as is having a high school junior around before July 1 for some archaic reason. You can add this to the long list of reasons to hate the NCAA and its slave labor business model.

But it seems to me, Sarkisian was too polite to tell the next Bob Woodward to hit the bricks. Probably would have made him look like a first class jackass as well. In any case, with all the attention this story is drawing it can only mean that the Dawgs are going undefeated next season - on the way to the BCS national championship game.

There is no other explanation. Why would the coaching staff of an 0-12 team that finished just about dead last in every statistical category last season need to have every recruiting visit detailed in the L.A. Times, Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer?

National championship. It’s the only logical conclusion.

About the Man Crush: This is a weekly installment for the blog where, for good or for bad, I’ll highlight one stand-out player or sports celebrity.