Notre Dame head coach had a quote in a Waterloo(Ontario) newspaper last Friday saying that he was told the Kitchener Rangers had offered Cam Fowler $500,000 to report to them last summer. Rumors of that type of stuff happening are pretty prevalent in the junior hockey world, though it's pretty rare to hear a college coach say anything about it on the record because for the most part, it's just not worth dealing with.
It looks like Jackson is going to deal with it though as the Kitchener Rangers and Windsor Spitfires are considering a libel suit against Jackson. They probably won't since I think it would be a hard case to prove, but it puts up a nice front and gives the CHL an excuse not to bother looking into this practice of teams offering huge under-the-table signing bonuses. Any libel case would likely come down to Jackson's word vs. Perry Fowler's. Fowler has more incentive to lie about not saying that, and the Fowler's have proven over this past month that their word doesn't mean much. In any case, this is why I believe you're never going to see CHL players be allowed eligibility in the NCAA. People can talk about players only getting a small weekly stipend, but nobody would feel comfortable having a player rumored to have received $500,000 for playing hockey in the NCAA. There's just too many rumors out there across all three Canadian junior leagues of players getting five and six figure signing bonuses that it's not worth the headache of trying to find out which players took money and which didn't.