The Rest of College Football

[iam416]

Yeah, I'd say in the corporate world, in most instances, there's a tremendous cost to the actual individual who engages in wrongful conduct. Corporations can, in fact, educate and threaten and get results because they have real leverage -- they can fire an employee that engages in wrongful conduct.

I dunno -- I just don't see the same leverage in this situation. The Universities are tasked with 24/7 responsibility for kids that, frankly, see little wrong with taking money and face almost no repercussions if caught doing so. The only way something bad happens to them is if they're still in school. Even then, in a lot of instances you're dealing with dirt poor kids who, frankly, would risk expulsion for $1000 given the likelihood that they'd ever get caught prior to leaving the University. And boosters are even less deterrable.

Getting back to your corporate example, I think it would be akin to a huge corporation trying to enforce a strict no-drinking at ALL times policy. How can you ever enforce that? I mean, you can follow employees around to make sure they don't go to bars, but eventually they're in their own homes and you just can't know what they're doing. I suppose you could test them every day or something, but one the whole, I think it's unrealistic. And I know a number of companies have anti-drug policies and random testing, but, in my experience, that's not much of a deterrent. Heh.

Universities ought to be held to strict standards when it comes to academics and academic fraud -- that's something that they have a ton of control over. They ought to be held to strict standards when it comes to addressing known conduct. But I'm not willing to hammer them for a failure to PREVENT the bulk of the types of conduct that the NCAA prohibits -- free drinks, free stuff, improper handshakes...and so forth.

[iam416]

Thinking out loud, Hanni, I guess one line to draw is booster/non-booster. In theory the University can educate boosters (I get crap from Ohio State periodically). Boosters, I gues, may also be deterrable -- i.e, not want to wreck the program. So, I guess maybe you bring the hammer down on that stuff. I think that was one of USC's bigger problems with Bush.

But I still have a probelm bringing the hammer down for non-booster stuff for the aforementioned reasons.

Anyway, amateurism is an extremely difficult notion/concept to enforce. Always, always, always has been.

Incidentally, I'm somewhat buoyed by this article. Suggests that if there was more to the Tressel stuff, Yahoo would have found it. That's one comprehensive bit of reporting -- every allegation by Shapiro is at least confirmed by another source, in a number of instances, several.

[Mackenzie]

IDK, if the Miami allegations are true how do you not make the penalties "severe"--whatever that is. Maybe, maybe if the NCAA would have imposed more SMU like penalties in the past then maybe, maybe CFB would not be in the crisis it is today. But, it seems that when many "scandals" are exposed the NCAA has little ability and/or resolve to do anything about it. That's not saying they don't do something but not enough to keep people from laughing behind their backs and just keep doing it. If state legislatures are so involved in college football (i.e. Texas) then why don't they enact legislation to make it a substantial crime for boosters or similar parties to provide benefits etc to college athletes. Don't know, maybe some already do. Maybe the legislatures should stay out of the picture anyway as once they get their foot in the door things aren't likely to get better anyway. My bad for even thinking of such a thing.


I agree the $100/200 dollar handshakes may never stop but.... Michigan (for instance) just spent something in the neighborhood of 250 million dollars for football stadium renovations alone. I can't believe that they don't have the money to put in place a compliance department that could make the universities compliance with NCAA rules squeaky clean. Can it stop scum like Tressel from lying? Probably not. But in those cases the penalties should be severe and not a generous retirement package and potentially another job in college football somewhere down the line. Not even as a janitor! Miami's penalties should be severe. They did it the old fashioned way, "they earned it." Wipe em off the map.

[entropy]

you'll never stop the $100 handshakes. But that isn't what the NCAA should stop. It is what is going on a Miami that should be stopped.

[iam416]

Yeah, Entropy. I think that's where I am. It would appear, at least initially, that Miami had plenty of opportunities to take action against this booster and did not.

[entropy]

[entropy]

[entropy]

http://espn.go.com/college-sports/story/_/id/6870978/university-central-florida-receives-ncaa-inquiry-letter

Central Florida is next

[Dr. Strangelove]

Al Golden already looking for a way to cut and run? He complains that no one at Miami told him or the new AD that these allegations had been made or that Miami had launched an internal investigation

http://msn.foxsports.com/collegefootball/story/Miami-football-coach-Al-Golden-says-school-should-have-told-him-about-alleged-violations-081711?GT1=39002

[Dr. Strangelove]

Paul Dee's hypocrisy

http://www.cbssports.com/#!/collegefootball/story/15446543/miamis-exad-new-poster-child-for-college-football-hypocrisy

[SeanB]

Anyway, I know - tinfoil. I admit it.

I'm with you on this one. ESPN has basically devolved into a male talk-show. I think it's fantastically hilarious that they are getting scooped on just about everything these days. They simply exist to pimp whatever they are invested in. As an example, NASCAR coverage has skyrocketed for them since they got in on the TV deal.

And you're not the only one to think that. Some of the local radio guys were speculating that given Miami is one of their "properties", ESPN won't give the story any kind of legs if they can help it, thereby keeping their contracts worth at least something.

[JRB]

With respect to controlling boosters, I think there has to be a way that schools can seek punishment or remuneration from rogue boosters who interfere with their ongoing enterprises. Perhaps it's possible to require season-ticket buyers and athletic department contributors to sign contracts obliging them to abide by NCAA rules. Such a contractual agreement probably wouldn't dissuade the Nevin Shapiros of the world, but I'd hope at least a few would be Shapiros would think twice before taking actions that could get them sued.

[entropy]

Miami scandal is symptom of NCAA flaws

By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports 13 hours, 10 minutes ago

CORAL GABLES, Fla. – It was freshman move-in day here on the sun-splashed campus of the University of Miami.

Kids unfolded maps looking for the proper residence hall.

Parents pushed carts full of clothes, bedding and refrigerators. Housing workers pointed this way and that and tried to make everyone feel welcome.

A short walk away television trucks were lined up outside the Isadore Hecht Athletic Center, reporters doing live stand-ups to discuss a scandal complete with a Ponzi schemer, South Beach hooker parties and a stripper abortion.

The day should have been happy and hopeful here. Instead, it was humiliating.

Perhaps one day it’ll be humiliating enough to shame the leaders of these universities to end the untenable charade of their current athletic model. It will take a lot, a lot more than Nevin Shapiro, the man behind the Ponzi scheme, the parties, the abortion and the biggest case of extra benefits in history. Guilty administrators got rich and comfortable on the backs of purported amateurs. The only cost was their self-respect.

“I am upset, disheartened and saddened by the recent allegations,” school president Donna Shalala said in a statement Wednesday.

Those were her first words since the scandal broke, and they were as weak and worthless as they were late.

She was hiding somewhere on campus, hoping it would all blow away because that’s what college leaders do. Better to craft a statement than hold a press conference and wind up looking like an E. Gordon Gee-level buffoon.

Shalala couldn’t even be troubled to offer a concern or apology to her new football coach, Al Golden, or new basketball coach, Jim Larranaga, neither of whom ever met Shapiro but must deal with the fallout.

College athletics is killing itself whole, one hypocritical scandal at a time, yet any honest reform is almost impossible to envision. We’re not talking about the too-little, too-late band-aids sprouting from last week’s vaunted NCAA retreat, one that featured no less than Shalala.

The whole system needs to go. The whole concept needs to be redone.

The problem is that the same rulebook that causes so many of these humbling hangovers also makes so much cash for the people that write and supposedly enforce it.

Until the shame outbalances the revenue, what’s the motivation to change?

Most of the thousands of violations Shapiro doled out were small stuff, the enormity of the scandal more the totality of it all and the seeming blind eye Miami turned.

Guys wanted to party on a yacht. Guys wanted to drink free in a VIP section of a nightclub. Guys wanted some cash, or a mansion to hang out in, or some extra money for a big hit, or maybe even the wildest of parties.

It’s not abnormal behavior from 20-year-olds.

Except in the mind of the NCAA, which is so far backward, it’s wasting time arguing over whether offering players a minor monthly stipend will cut too far into the adults’ gravy train.

The truth is no one respects the rules of amateurism – not the players and certainly not the administrators. They don’t embrace the austerity that should come from operating a system that, for tax-avoidance purposes, is hyped as just some extracurricular pursuit.

Know this about Nevin Shapiro: He rained down millions on Miami players during an eight-year spread, yet he didn’t come close to the levels of gifts and graft that former Fiesta Bowl CEO John Junker lavished on athletic directors, presidents and conference commissioners.

Shapiro took scores of players out on his $1.6 million yacht. It didn’t cost nearly as much as the Orange Bowl spent in 2010 to provide 40 athletic directors and four conference commissioners (plus spouses) with a four-day Caribbean cruise.

Included in that junket? Then-Miami athletic director Kirby Hocutt.

College athletics is about getting your palm greased. And nobody has its hand out like the already well-paid folks running the show.

If a bowl director is willing to pay off an AD so his sweetheart contract stays intact, hey, that’s business. If a player takes a fraction of the same thing, he’s suspended.

If that’s the deal, fine. Just don’t be so surprised that the players and boosters look at the administrators’ corruption and shrug off their own. Just stop thinking the student-athletes are too na?ve to understand that everyone above them is being paid handsomely and will still beg and grab for every last quarter rolling down the street.

This isn’t 1955 anymore.

You think Miami players were rushing to get to know Nevin Shapiro? You ought to see administrators on a Nike retreat or when a television network asks for a game to be swapped or someone projects that there’s a couple extra bucks in conference mega-expansion.

Besides, the grown-ups leeched to Shapiro as hard and fast as the unpaid players. The promise of his donations overwhelmed any bit of restraint.

In 2001, Miami athletic director Paul Dee, who would later chair the NCAA’s committee on infractions and dole out hypocritical punishments, oversaw a department that gave freshman Willis McGahee a mentor: Nevin Shapiro, convicted felon. (Shapiro pleaded guilty to felony assault in 1995; he’s now serving a 20-year federal prison term for bilking investors in a $930 million Ponzi scheme.)

Then there was that now infamous picture of Shalala at a bowling alley eyeballing a check Shapiro had written for $50,000, the promise that thousands might one day turn to millions practically dancing above her head.

The people running college athletics are desperate for money – for themselves and their salaries and their facilities, for their private planes and their comped cars and their golf-course memberships.

They want to avoid paying players and taxes as if they run a little league, then get paid and pampered like they run the NFL.
Everyone is chasing the cash. Everyone was chasing Nevin Shapiro.

Now the truth has come out. The old charade has been exposed again, a parade of players seeking an under-the-table handout from an out-of-control booster.

So here come the ugly headlines and the prepared statements and the wringing hands calling for another summit or retreat or task force to discuss not changing much of anything.

It should’ve been a perfect day at the U, all these bright-eyed teens and proud parents carrying boxes on the first day of the rest of their life. Instead, the same old greedy scandal hung once again in the air, a school soiled by sports.

Freshmen moving in, Donna Shalala and company hiding out.

http://sports.yahoo.com/investigations/news?slug=dw-wetzel_miami_scandal_scene_081711

[Optimus Prime]

This has been common knowledge in Miami for the last few years, not sure why it has taken the NCAA so much time to investigate, apparently it has been ongoing over the last 5 months. Word of caution, Shapiro is a 20-year convicted felon and does miss the limelight.

[entropy]

but if he has the bank records and details....

he might be scum, but that doesn't mean he's lying.