Category Archives: Ohio State

College Football, Miami Hurricanes, NCAA, Nevin Shapiro, Ohio State

A House of Cards

Yet again, another sordid scandal plagues college football. Another powerhouse accused of non-compliance. Another messy saga for a sport that, as much as we seem to love it, is as warped and seedy as 1920s politics.
But instead of one Boss Tweed, we’ve got thousands.
On the heels of Ohio State’s players trading memorabilia for tattoos, and former coach Jim Tressel knowing about it all along, comes the predictable scandal at the University of Miami.
Predictable because if there’s trouble, The U can find it like it’s players can the NFL.
Basically, a booster with a money tree showered athletes with all kinds of gifts and lots of people knew about it.
By law, I think I’m required to restate the accusations in the Yahoo! Sports report just so you can be stunned at the sheer stupidity of it all. So here we go…
Former Miami booster, Nevin Shapiro, who surprisingly is serving a 20-year prison sentence for masterminding a $930 million Ponzi scheme, says he gave impermissible benefits to 72 of the university’s football players – as well as other athletes – between 2002 and 2010.
These impermissible benefits include: money (and lots of it), cars, yacht trips, jewelry, televisions, sex parties and meals. Shapiro says he paid for an abortion for one player and an engagement ring for another.
The list of players include a who’s who of Miami’s all-stars over the past decade: Vince Wilfork, Devin Hester, Willis McGahee, Antrel Rolle, Jon Beason, Jonathon Vilma, Tyrone Moss, current quarterback Jacory Harris and the late Sean Taylor.
Allegedly, at least six coaches and as many as 10 employees of the athletic department were aware of Shapiro and his salacious activities.
“Hell yeah, I recruited a lot of kids for Miami,” Shapiro said. “With access to the clubs, access to the strip joints. My house. My boat. We’re talking about high school football players. Not anybody can just get into the clubs or strip joints. Who is going to pay for it and make it happen? That was me.”
Don’t think you can believe a convicted Ponzi schemer? Fine. Perhaps you’ll believe the 100-plus hours of research and verification done by Yahoo! Sports on the report over 11 months.
“I did it because I could,” Shapiro said. “And because nobody stepped in to stop me.”
Granted, Shapiro comes off in the report like a pathetic wannabe, a jock sniffer who actually thought he was friends with these athletes, not because of the money and services he provided them, but because they liked him. So he’s mad that they’ve distanced themselves from him and it’s payback time.
But without question, there’s a bigger problem that yet another scumbag getting his hands on a major university and it’s football program.
There is a problem with the ethics and morals of the athletes, to some degree. And there’s certainly a problem with the morals and ethics of those in the athletic departments and coaching staffs.
I’m tired of people claiming you can’t blame an 18-year-old for taking money, cars and clothes. You can.
We need to come up with some sort of definitive answer on where we stand with 18-year-olds. They can vote. They can fight for our country and hold a gun. But they can’t know right from wrong and not take payments from boosters? How many times do we have to go over this?
Would I take the money? Even at 18, I honestly don’t think so. But I don’t really know. I’m not 18 anymore. I would have been terrified of getting caught. I would have been shamed beyond belief if my parents found out.
But that’s not fair. I’m not them. None of us are. We don’t know the circumstances or the pressures. So it doesn’t matter what we would do. What matters is what all these so called student-athletes are doing. It isn’t 1965. We can’t continue to sweep this under the rug. Because no matter who is to blame, it’s not OK.
There are rules and they are there for a reason. College athletics are not professional. You are not paid to play. You receive a free college education. There is a trade off.
We have rules to keep us all in check. We’re only as good as the honor we have in upholding them and the justice system that punishes for breaking them. For example, if I run a red light or speed, it’s a risk. Ten years ago, you could run a red light and without the police there at the time, you wouldn’t be caught or punished. Now, nearly every stoplight has a camera. They will find you. And you will pay.
Except the very people who set the rules, enforce them and support them don’t seem to see the hypocrisy of what they do.
A corrupt BCS system has followed a corrupt bowl system. Athletes are given bags of “swag” with tons of valuable goodies for going to bowl games, but can’t have a job in order to have gas money. Schools are jumping conferences all in the name of exposure and money, but don’t let Tim Tebow see a dime of millions earned from selling his No. 15 Florida Gators jersey or having his likeness appear on the cover of a video game.
The University of Texas can threaten to bolt the Big XII only to stay because they are given their own TV channel, but student-athletes don’t have negotiating rights, of any kind. 

So let’s be real – we lost the whole student-athlete part a long time ago.

Even though 90 percent of athletes won’t play professional sports, it’s the 10 percent who do that get all the attention. Even though the BCS only affects 10 percent of college football teams, it gets all our attention.
The NCAA can have all the corporate partners it wants, get money for exploiting college athletics, but it won’t allow for a per diem larger than a McDonald’s happy meal. Schools can have corporate partners, conferences get TV deals and coaches can earn a million dollars per year, yet they all say it’s about growing young men and women and working with student-athletes.
No, no it’s not. It’s about wins. It’s about championships. It’s about your school’s brand. It’s about money.
The NCAA is the very definition of hypocrisy. From university presidents to coaches, boosters to athletes, the entire college football system is about as shady as an oak tree. And it’s everywhere.
Miami is just the latest school in a long line of NCAA investigations involving college football and some of its most successful programs. In just the past 18 months, USC, Ohio State, Auburn, Oregon, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia Tech and LSU have either been investigated or sanctioned for infractions. There are too many to list over just the past decade.
So if you think this is going away, keep telling yourself that. Keep that oblivious attitude. Stick your head in the sand, join the crowd. Join the NCAA in it’s ridiculous attempt and revisionism. Crack jokes about them making schools vacate wins and championships.
Or, for once, everyone could grow a spine and do what’s needed.
We need to blow up the NCAA and it’s rule book.
Figuratively, of course.
The NCAA is a house of cards, built by revisionists who stick their heads in the sand, investigate when someone blows a whistle and hand out death penalties. A death penalty for Miami won’t teach the next school a lesson – because it’s already happening somewhere else.
We have rules to check us all in check. We’re only as good as the honor we have in upholding them and the justice system. If I run a red light or speed, it’s a risk. Ten years ago, you could run a red light and without the police there at the time, you wouldn’t be caught or punished. Now, nearly every stoplight has a camera. They will find you. And you will pay the ticket. Do it too many times, you lose your license.
So blow it up. All of it. Rewrite the rules for modern times.
I don’t want them to pay student-athletes and I don’t think that will fix the larger issue. But maybe it’s worth a shot to really look into it.
Get the agents out of college athletics. I don’t care how, but do it. Make it a federal offense to give money to a student-athlete. Make it a jailable offense to take money from a booster or an agent or anyone as a student-athlete. We have to start making them feel it, too. Just because you are now in the NFL doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be punished. Perhaps schools who get hit three times have to give up all college athletics for five years.
It’s time to wash the system clean, a baptism of sorts. Hit restart and build the NCAA around what’s real, what works and still manages to build integrity, honor and reward the talented, hard-working student-athletes the right way.
Maybe these are terrible ideas. But they are at least ideas. What does it take to make sweeping changes, because my head isn’t buried in the sand.  
Is yours?
Better yet, is the NCAAs?

If so, let the cards fall where they may.

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NCAA, Ohio State, Terrelle Pryor

Gray’s Anatomy

There was a time I was sympathetic and understanding to different situations that occurred in sports that really had no bearing on my life whatsoever. In my late teens and 20s, I’d see a college athlete get nailed for taking money under the table and think, “I can see why that guy just wants to get some pizza and beer money.”
It was a violation of the rules, but I kind of thought those rules were stupid.
Rules made by university presidents who pocket six figure salaries mostly built around college athletics. How out of touch were they? Bow-ties and banquet halls.
There’s a great line in the 1993 movie, “The Program”, where James Caan (as the head coach of fictional university ESU) explains to the board, “When was the last time you saw 70,000 people come to watch a damn chemistry experiment?” And it was true. Still is.
Perhaps, in a larger sense, our priorities are out-of-whack, but nonetheless, they are established by now.
About six months ago, a diehard Alabama fan called into a sports talk show and made the statement that he had poisoned the legendary Toomer Trees at Auburn. He ended his crazy rant with “Roll Damn Tide!” He claims it wasn’t him, it was a man sitting next to him that did it and he just repeated it on the radio in anger because of all the Auburn fans gloating over winning the national championship. Alabama coach Nick Saban and others donated money to try and save the trees and offer support.
They are trees for crying out loud. We kill millions for paper every year. But they are revered in Auburn like Boston fans worship the Green Monster in Fenway.
One hundred million watch the Super Bowl, but the number of people who voted in the last election does not even come close to that number.
These are our priorities. We are who we are. We like sports a hell of a lot more than we do economics, chemistry and healthcare mandates. The evening news doesn’t interrupt sporting events, it gets pushed back to 11:55.
For further proof, look at the 1994 NBA Finals. The famous O.J. Simpson chase was split-screened with the New York Knicks-Houston Rockets game. Even the news, when worthy enough to interrupt our sports fetish, is about sports in a way. The only reason people cared about a man who’s wife had been murdered going on the lamb was because the man was famed running back O.J. Simpson, an NFL Hall of Famer and former Heisman Trophy winner.
I grew up in the 1990s, so as a 13-year-old, I saw “The Program” in the theaters – with my parents. There was a scene that was cut from the movie – where a bunch of teammates, drunk, lay in the middle of the road as cars go flying by, inches from their bodies. My parents were horried.
I found it crazy – but also, as a budding athlete, saw the subtle point the scene was making. Athletes will do anything to reduce fear.
There were various scenes where the star quarterback, Joe Kane (an alcoholic with zero family support) did crazy things like stand in front of an oncoming train before moving at the last second and race his motorcycle around some sort of quarry at ridiculous speeds. Kane even tells his girlfriend the same thing: he does it to maintain his edge. His teammates look to him as the leader, he was a Heisman candidate for a national title contender, so these stunts help him blow off steam and look fearless.
There’s just a whole different mindset to being an athlete, a former athlete and a passionate fan that others cannot understand.
That said, I’m older now. I’ve got a wife, three children with a fourth on the way and a mortgage. My tolerance level for certain things in sports has dropped.
So when I heard the news last night that Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor was leaving school amid the scandal that cost his coach his job, after new accusations that Pryor made thousands of dollars for signed memorabilia, I just changed the channel. You become numb to it at some point, like you would anything else that seems to happen all the time – you stop reacting.
That is, unless you are the NCAA. Rules are rules, no doubt. My wife and I preach integrity to our oldest, who plays three sports. I want him to know and follow the rules. But now those that comply and follow NCAA guidelines are an anomaly, not the norm.
I go back and forth on it all the time. I do not like the idea of paying college athletes, who are already getting paid in the form of a free education. On the other hand, those athletes make more money for the school in one game than the rest of the student body will give back in the form of alumni donations for 10 years after they graduate.
The NCAA markets and sells jerseys with specific numbers on them, like Pryor’s No. 2 Ohio State jersey, but he will see nothing of that revenue. The only reason the jersey sells is because it’s his number.
The NCAA basically violates its own moral code in this regard constantly. Do not take any free food or clothes – but the bowl games you play in can give you $300 sunglasses, an X-Box 360 and a Gucci dufflebag.
The NCAA tries to pretend events do not happen – nearly a decade later. Remember Michigan’s Fab Five and their consecutive Final Four appearances in 1992-93? Well, you can’t remember that; the NCAA says that they didn’t exist after finding that a booster gave cash to players.
How about USC’s national title that was just revoked by the BCS (a hypocrisy itself)? No, you did not watch USC smoke Oklahoma 55-19. It didn’t happen – there was no winner that year. At least, that’s what the BCS determined after the fallout from the Reggie Bush scandal. Since Bush was ruled ineligible by the NCAA, those games don’t count. Bush is being viewed along the same lines as a performance enhancing drug. He cheated.
We’re dealing with varying shades of gray here. Is what Bush did against the rules? Yes, it was. Did it affect his play that his parents got a house? I would guess not, but who’s to say. Did it make him attend USC in the first place? I cannot answer that – I guess it could have.
But you start dabbling in these shades of gray and what’s right and fair and wrong and illegal become so intertwined and blurred, it feels like vertigo. What if Major League Baseball said that since players on winning teams used steroids, there were no World Series champions from roughly 1997-2005?
What? What the hell does that mean? I was there! I saw it happen! If the pitchers were juicing and the hitters were juicing, can we just call it a wash? Are the fans with 2004 Red Sox championship t-shirts or USC fans with championship hats suddenly going to disappear like the newspaper headlines in “Back to the Future”?
As a society, we can’t rewrite history. We can’t undo slavery in America, it’s there. You cannot undo what’s already been done.
This does not excuse Pryor or his greed and stupidity. One of Pryor’s friends told ESPN that Pryor was paid $500-$1,000 each time he signed a mini-football helmet, as well as other gear, for a total of somewhere between $20,000-$40,000. The source also said Pryor received thousands of dollars in free food at local restaurants around Columbus, Ohio, free drinks at bars, free tattoos and free loaner cars from local dealerships.
I’m guessing Pryor did not do all that to be a fearless leader of his team or to blow off steam. And that’s a little more than just money for pizza and beer.
It does not excuse hundreds of similar actions by athletes and coaches over the years in the shady dealings of pay for play. But we can’t just keep pretending it is going to change, that the rules are rules forever and cannot be modified.
And we have to stop pretending like what happens on the field is erased from our minds just because it’s stricken from a record book.
We have priorities, and like it or not, sports are a big part of them. How these situations are handled actually says more about us than we care to admit.
After all, when was the last time 70,000 people showed up to watch someone grade a chemistry experiment?
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