It’s a ‘U’ thing, we wouldn’t understand

[News Bot]

I am like a lot of people in this business. When I read the Yahoo report by Charles Robinson on the mess in Miami, I was blown away. We all know that college football has a seedy side but this took it to a new level.
So many players — including a couple of Gators — are involved you wonder how long it will take the tortoise known as the NCAA to sift through the mess.
Miami is done. It will be a long time before the Hurricanes are relevant in football again. If ever. I don’t think Miami will get the death penalty. If you haven’t seen the 30 for 30 documentary on SMU you should go back and watch it before talking about the death penalty. SMU was a conspiracy to pay a lot of players over a long period of time and when the SMU boosters were caught they didn’t stop.
This is different. Really, really bad, but different.
One of the big questions to me is how the other schools will handle the players named in the report. Georgia’s Orson Charles, Purdue’s Robert Marve, UCF’s Jeff Godfrey and Gators Matt Patchan and Andre Debose are named as having been a guest of sleaze-and-scheme booster Nevin Shapiro.
You can declare them ineligible until things are resolved but there is no telling how long it will take. Or you can play them and hope for the best. Tough call.
The most embarrassed person in all of this has to be Paul Dee, who was the athletic director at Miami during the scandal (his second of his tenure there) and now works for the NCAA where he was the point man on the infractions committee that killed Southern Cal over Reggie Bush. Then, Dee implied USC should have known and allowed to much access to boosters. Yikes, takes one to know one.
It’s unfortunate that after all the scandals we have dealt with in the sport over the last 18 months or so, it only seems to be getting worse. We should be excited that college football is almost here. Instead, we’re neck-deep in another mess.

Source: GatorSports.com - Dooley's Desk

 

[DRU2012]

Yes, it really sucks, that last line about sums up how WE feel about this. Wait all through a long, hot summer, where it seems like the days are getting longer and longer and time slowing down, finally the end in sight, and now we have to worry about losing two guys who are intrinsic to our offense's resurgence? I know that this is really "small potatoes" in the context of the larger charges, repercussions and the HUGE mess down in Miami, but in the final analysis, I only care about OUR program--I could not care LESS about scUM (Escambia94's short-hand epithet/anagram is easy and accurate).
In fact, if not for us (like SO many other schools, as will surely come out over the coming weeks) having players who were also recruited by Miami (AND a new young coach who was right in the middle of the "action", so to speak), this would just be another (mainly entertaining) "so what ELSE is new?"-story. As E-94 and others have noted, few of us are surprised by ANY of this (personally, the only part that penetrated my general numbness at this kind of news was the whole "bounty" on headhunting-hits and "bonus for injuries and knock-outs"-thing: this is FELONY behavior, on both sides of the equation). The at-large breast beating and supposed shock and outrage among the media and casual fans just doesn't seem credible (again, there's Captain Reneau in Rick's Cafe yelling, "I'm shocked, simply SHOCKED to discover there is GAMBLING going on in this establishment!" as the croupier hands him a fistful of cash and says quietly, "Your winnings, sir..."). As you say, the calls for the Death Penalty are ludicrous--through inaction, atrophied oversight and what can only be described as mainly "invisible enforcement" over the last few years, the NCAA has looked practically impotent. They have marginalized themselves: at this point, they're just trying to hang on to the legitimacy of their position as the organizational framework within which College Football exists and operates--does BUSINESS. They have to "do SOMETHING", but more than ever they must keep their biggest, most powerful and influential "member institutions" fat and happy, comfortable in that framework and confident that it will all go on getting "bigger and better".
Actually, much as that makes us all more cynical than ever regarding the whole system, it also makes OUR little part in this, and its direct threat to our players, less worrisome, I'm thinking. As I've said elsewhere, unless something much worse comes out about either of them or the extent of their involvement, it shouldn't be too big a deal for them. By this view, the most that MIGHT happen is that they are questioned, maybe required to give statements to the NCAA regarding what they each "personally remember" of their recruiting visits, and for them that'll be the end of it--and even then, they'll be among DOZENS of players from programs across the South so questioned. Mark my words: "The process will be the punishment".
Marshal McCluhan made a media mockery. Hey, that's pretty good. Guess I'll quit while I'm ahead.

 

[robdog]

No way they get the death penalty, but as always, going to be interesting to see how the NCAA wants to handle this. Seems like A LOT of evidence is mounting. Maybe a USC type punishment?

 

[DRU2012]

No way they get the death penalty, but as always, going to be interesting to see how the NCAA wants to handle this. Seems like A LOT of evidence is mounting. Maybe a USC type punishment?

Who knows? Trouble is, at this point there is no "scale" by which to judge. It is the NCAA's own fault entirely, too. Presumably they're still "deliberating" the backlog of multiple-violation charges we've been hearing about for months. How do they punish who for what against the backdrop of this complete disaster of a worst-case scenario?

 

[Escambia94]

Maybe a tOSU punishment...nothing. That is all.

 

[DRU2012]

I'm getting sick of this thing already--having to hear the scUM apologists on the radio today as I drove around is just too much. I don't know who's more irritating: the Miami media-people who try to minimize and soft-sell the story and any talk of punishment, or the fans whose main anger is aimed at Nevil Shapiro--they aren't angry (let alone ashamed--don't make me laugh) at what he was doing FOR "the Program" when this was all happening, only at what he is doing TO it in "ratting us out" now. They sound like members of an organized crime family; the Miami reporters sound like the indicted Bosses' attorneys.
Nationally, the various media personalities and talking heads make statements and propose arguments that reflect who they work for and/or the underlying axes each has to grind. The hypocrisy is piling up as fast as the BS. There's no end to it: it's everywhere and getting worse, and I have no confidence that the guilty powers-that-be are going to be held to account, or indeed anything is going to change. Like you, I think the NCAA will continue to pick and choose who it goes after according to who it likes or dislikes--in other words, who it is beholden to.
Speaking of which, while all this is blowing up, there is another potential forrest fire about to go out of control in the form of a collision of two separate stories in Alabama. While there are still new revelations surfacing regarding Cam Newton, his dad, boosters, bagmen and dummy accounts to launder payoff-money through Cecil's "church foundations", at the same time two investigative sports reporters are coming forth with a detailed story of all of the same kinds of violations at the University of Alabama--and these involve not only 6 of their top players, including their Heisman-candidate RB, all (according to the story) "now clearly and completely ineligible", but Nick Saban himself having a major Tuscaloosa athletic agent as a partner to whom these players and others were "funneled", essentially given exclusive access (wink wink) for representation in their efforts to eventually be drafted and to land NFL contracts. This too is a "major violation", a clear "conflict of interest" that you'd think couldn't be denied or ignored. However, so far that seems to be exactly how Saban, UA, the Alabama media, and now the national media and (not so surprising) the NCAA seem content to handle it. Meanwhile, there's Saban on that "In Depth Media Panel" on ESPN today looking into the camera and saying, "It's not like anyone is getting rich from any of this"...! Dude, you're getting paid $5 Million a year to start with, and that STILL isn't the end of it--you literally have been getting it coming AND going!!! He thinks he's too big to get caught, I guess, and so far, who can argue?
So when we talk about the NCAA "picking and choosing", "who they like and don't like", "who they are beholden to", and "nothing changing"--not to mention hypocrisy, inconsistency, and turning a blind eye--The Song Remains The Same.

 

[Escambia94]

September 17th, tOSU and scUM play each other. That's a lot of cheating on one field, and a lot of sleaziness in getting away with it. As far as Alabama and Auburn, those are still rumors AFAIK. The informant for Auburn lacks sufficient evidence to say anything now without being culpable of libel and slander.

 

[DRU2012]

September 17th, tOSU and scUM play each other. That's a lot of cheating on one field, and a lot of sleaziness in getting away with it. As far as Alabama and Auburn, those are still rumors AFAIK. The informant for Auburn lacks sufficient evidence to say anything now without being culpable of libel and slander.

1) There's so many known-violators out there now that we may have to give 'em numbers to tell 'em apart:
The tOSU/scUM game can be "SleazeBowl 1".
2) Yeah, that Danny Sheridan fiasco certainly "muddies the (already dirty) waters" in the Auburn pay-for-play scandal, at least for now...but as with so much of that story, the reports of these activities themselves remain active, and continue to be pursued.
Now, with regard to the Alabama story, according to at least one reporter by the name of Brooks who has doggedly gone after after it, he now loudly and relentlessly insists that it's past the "alleged"-stage, that he "has the goods" on Saban, his partner in the agency, the players who have signed with them--including SIX who are on the team going into the coming season, all starters (including Richardson)--and the paper trail that proves the NCAA-sanctioned "conflict of interest" on Saban's part AND assorted violations that render the players completely, preemptively ineligible. He claims he WANTS to be "challenged by someone" on any and all of this at this point, but that neither the central figures, their attorneys nor the University has or will "take the bait" because then it could go immediately to a court of law--where "the truth will out" and they can't control it. Given the way the local Alabama "journalists" have steadfastly ignored the story, and the national media (including ESPN, who is otherwise all OVER all other such collegiate tales-of-woe in their typical breast-beating self-righteousness, but NOT THIS ONE, 'cause oh yeah Nick Saban IS ON THEIR "PANEL" for crying out loud!) thus far is doing the same, you've got to wonder what the deal is there. Do they truly believe that they have the "pull" to squash this thing, or at least to see it buried? Or are they fooling themselves, and the media (ESPN included) just have enough on their plates at the moment and will let this "develop further" until the other stuff begins to "lose its legs"? Either way, it may take a particular "other shoe" to drop, some juicy revelation on an otherwise "slow news day" to tip the first publicity-domino. And then it'll suddenly be "the latest word coming out of Tuscaloosa..."