Report: Rent allegation under scrutiny

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The head of the Alabama High School Athletic Association said his group plans to look into a report that a former high school coach paid the rent for his player, Eric Bledsoe, The New York Times reported Saturday.

Bledsoe

Maurice Ford, the former coach at A. H. Parker High School in Birmingham, Ala., paid Bledsoe's rent during his senior season, The Times reported on Saturday. Bledsoe, who played for Kentucky last season, has entered the NBA draft.

Steve Savarese, the executive director of the Alabama association, said Parker might have to forfeit its season, which ended with a loss in the state title game, if the allegation proves true.

"We'll formulate and evaluate and see if we have enough information to investigate," Savarese told the newspaper.

Bledsoe transferred to Parker his senior year after his previous school, Carol W. Hayes High School, closed. The landlord of the house that Bledsoe and his mother lived in, Brenda Axle, told The Times that Ford paid her at least three months' rent.

"AHSAA rules prohibit violations of amateurism or recruitment," Savarese told the newspaper.

Kentucky said in a release Saturday Bledsoe's high school grades were cleared by the NCAA.

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