A few months back, Yahoo! Sports’ Charles Robinson said that they had a “10 out of 10” scandal story, while the Tressel situation only garned a middle rating. Well, it’s here, and it’s an eleven:
In 100 hours of jailhouse interviews during Yahoo! Sports’ 11-month investigation, Hurricanes booster Nevin Shapiro described a sustained, eight-year run of rampant NCAA rule-breaking, some of it with the knowledge or direct participation of at least seven coaches from the Miami football and basketball programs. At a cost that Shapiro estimates in the millions of dollars, he said his benefits to athletes included but were not limited to cash, prostitutes, entertainment in his multimillion-dollar homes and yacht, paid trips to high-end restaurants and nightclubs, jewelry, bounties for on-field play (including bounties for injuring opposing players), travel and, on one occasion, an abortion.
The entire breakdown is unreal, as are the individualized player pages detailing the involvement of specific current and former players and recruits. Go and read it. (Though the Worldwide Leader seems a little slow on the take . . . .)
My questions are these: How do you stop this kind of thing, with some renegade booster running his own personal red light district? And for high school coaches, do you educate your players to try to avoid this kind of thing, both on recruiting trips and as players? Can you? (Note that the page for Orson Charles says it was his high school coach that took him to meet Nevin Shapiro.)
And, finally, with all the fear about paying stipends to player or criticisms of amateur athletics in general, stories like this make me wonder if it’s all beside the point: In time, amateur collegiate athletics may simply collapse under its own weight.