Facts trickle in and the rumors roll on.

The University of Notre Dame announced Tuesday that former Irish quarterback, Demetrius Jones, will not be released from his scholarship.

What this means to Jones is that, under NCAA rules, he will have to wait a year and pay one year’s worth of tuition before NIU is allowed to place him on scholarship.

But that does him no good if NIU doesn’t have a scholarship to give.

“That’s out of our control,” head coach Joe Novak said regarding Notre Dame not releasing Jones from his scholarship. “But honestly it doesn’t make a difference because I don’t have a scholarship to give him anyway. That’s not the issue right now, its just a matter of if he can get into school or not and we should have an announcement on that here very shortly.”

NIU sports information director Donna Turner told the Journal Gazette that the Huskies are at their scholarship limit for the 2007 season and that Jones is yet to be cleared to practice because he is still going through university processing on his transfer.

However, Turner noted that Jones can still participate in practice and talk to coaches, but just as a walk-on.

Even after all of this, Jones still hasn’t contacted any of the Huskie coaches.
“If they [the NIU coaching staff] even know I’m here, it’s because of rumors and nothing I told them,” Jones told the South Bend Tribune.

“My plan is to practice with them this year and be eligible to play next fall. That’s how I hope it works out.”

As for coach Novak, he’s just ready to get everything settled.

“I want to get it over with,” Novak said. “It’s a distraction. He’s a great player and we’d love to have him. I wanna get it settled so this football team can move on.”

To back-track on the situation, Jones enrolled at NIU last weekend, practiced with Notre Dame on Thursday, then left the team on Friday before finally talking with Irish head coach Charlie Weis about the situation this past Monday.

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