Current and former Miami Hurricanes players were mentioned in allegations that a former booster provided impermissible benefits to 72 players from 2002-2010. Jeffrey Boan/AP
College football once existed. It was a sport that thrived at State U, where athletes played for pride, tradition, pageantry, and glory.
Saturday afternoons were illuminated with sunshine, marching bands and cheerleaders pumped up the home crowd. The atmosphere was unlike any other.
Now, it appears the NCAA can make mountains out of molehills, with dirt mounds of corruption mounted so high, the playing surface is no longer visible.
It’s no longer a game. Same….scandal, different day of the week.
The tradition is long gone. To put it in rapper Eminem’s words, “so paper thin, it simply blew away with the wind.”
Now, the college football is like the minor leagues. Players come with dreams of playing in the NFL, and fans come to watch the select superstars who will eventually get paid for their services…er…paid millions.
As the USA Today said, “Is it possible to be near a cesspool and not get splashed?”
Put on a rain jacket, and you still get soaked. The recent splash: the Miami Hurricanes. Not newcomers to embarrassing headlines, but nothing compared to what recent allegations have been unveiled.
Allegations by former booster Nevin Shapiro might as well have opened up the NCAA’s Pandora’s Box. Released the last bones in the closet nobody wanted to see.
Shapiro told Yahoo! Sports he disseminated cash, favors, perks, the whole nine yards (no pun intended) to a reportedly 72 former and current Hurricanes players from 2002 to 2010.
Money, trips on his yacht, prostitutes, pretty much anything the players desired. You would think you would have to call Eliot Spitzer for this, but Shapiro has the goods too.
Currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for a ponzi scheme, he claims he has the paper trail to prove it-financial records, photos, everything.
Included is a nice picture of Shapiro donating a $50,000 check to Miami president Donna Shalala.
So who do we believe? A convicted felon or university reps. You would think this would be an obvious answer, but now-a-days, pretty much every school it seems has been splashed by the cesspool of corruption.
Coast-to-coast. USC in the West; Miami and North Carolina on the East coast; Ohio State up north, Oklahoma and LSU in the south. The list goes on.
What’s the scenario? Everyone is a cheater, with not enough fingers to point at. So let’s play the blame game.
Blame boosters like Shapiro, who provide student-athletes barely legal with prostitutes and extra cash, and fail to understand the definition of “ethics.”
You can blame the players, who want to reap the benefits but hold on the responsibility. And don’t even bring up a possible pay-for-play scenario, or some kind of stipend people feel they should be obligated to have. These athletes aren’t innocent either.
They are cheaters too when they use prostitutes or sell memorabilia they won.
Add in an arbitrary NCAA rulebook that the NCAA might as well have written in Navajo, and there is a bleak future towards a stop to the madness.
Knute Rockne is turning in his grave, and the leather heads are in dismay.
Try stopping a flood with a mop. Not going to happen. The NCAA might do a lousy job catching the bad guys, but with so many to catch, can you blame them?
Everyone speeds, but do all the violators get caught? No.
If the rumors are true, should the Hurricanes receive the death penalty? In a perfect world, they should and would. Unfortunately, the NCAA lives in fantasy and would be lucky to give the Hurricanes the same penalties as USC-two-year postseason ban, 30 scholarships lost-for much more severe violations.
This is not the SMU of the 1980s. There are television deals and millions of revenue lost when a season is lost.
And you want to talk playoffs?! Where’s Jim Mora when you need him.
What the NCAA needs is an antibiotic to stop this virus. Maybe even a life-size anti-bacterial wipe. Because this cesspool is messy.