If they told him the day of his questioning by the NCAA then why could they have not before hand. The result is the same......Pearl got the info before the interview. The whole thing stinks and the biggest stink of all was if he had fessed up that day we would not be having this conversation.
I don't think it's clear who told Pearl about the photo. The way I read it, UT's counsel may not have informed him and his staff about the photo at all. I read it as saying that Pearl and staff didn't know about the photo until it was presented during their interviews.
Obviously if UT could have informed them about the photo and didn't, that's another huge screw-up in a very screwed-up mess. One would have to assume that there's at least a possibility that things would have turned out much differently if they had known about the photo nearly a week in advance.
Of course, with that said, "panicking" is no real excuse for lying about it, though I will always maintain that a majority of Americans would have acted similarly and I think it's unfortunate that we have a system in place that allows an NCAA vendetta to bring down a coach's career.