Dr. Strangelove: Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the Miami Hurricanes
Recruiting and academic violations
it’s all part of College Football
For the most part college football games don’t interest me. I only watched three last year and that’s only because one was the national championship game and the others were to see if Cam Newton was worth all the fuss. (I think he was. He’ll be a superstar.)
The thing that interests me most about college football is all the stuff surrounding it. Recruiting and academic violations. Sleazy coaches who always end up with another good job someplace or get a big fat settlement to go away. Then after a few months they sue they’re former employers claiming they got railroaded. Funny stuff.
The big deal today is a now imprisoned Ponzi scheme guy named Nevin Shapiro is spilling the beans about parties and women and stuff given to Miami Hurricane players. Of course the NCAA and the Miami hierarchy is shocked and outraged. To them I reply, oh bullshit.
Recruiting violations in college athletics are like steroids in baseball. Rampant as all hell. And just like Barry Bonds had to use them to pass Babe Ruth on the home run list. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa used them to pass Roger Maris. If I could name all the pitchers I’d bet the farm were on steroids or some other supplement MadMike would be threatened with tons of lawsuits. Of course they’d all go away when MMA lawyers demanded they testify under oath they didn’t use performance enhancing drugs. So hell yes. The real deal is if a college or university didn’t promise extra goodies to the best athletes they wouldn’t get the best athletes.
This of course doesn’t mean the smartest athletes. Terrell Prior is no Peyton Manning. Peyton didn’t go to Florida or Ohio State either. Nor did he win a national championship. In college it’s more about the raw talent than intelligence.
Even the darling of the last two years, Boise State is in trouble for violations. I say give em a medal. It show’s they’re trying to be a successful college football program. The secret is making sure your sleazball boosters are better at hiding their sleaziness then the other universities.
Anymore, I’d be shocked and outraged at any institute of higher learning not trying to game the system. If I were part of a student body or alumni organization, I’d demand why the administration doesn’t want a winning football program.
The Miami Hurricanes football program will get a suspension, for a year maybe two.
[…] Graphic: Mad Mike’s America […]
When it comes to football the only level that seems to be relatively corruption free is the NFL. High School football in some states (Texas, California, Florida) leaves a lot to be desired and these are the programs that feed lots of colleges through the country in all divisions.
“Of course they’d all go away when MMA lawyers demanded they testify under oath they didn’t use performance enhancing drugs.” Straight up!
Like what Lazer said, and the death penalty. SMU is only just now on the verge of being worthy of consideration as any sort of contender since June Jones showed up after leaving Hawaii. Part of the problem is they had to start from scratch and operate on the straight and narrow ever since.
Joe, since you are not really in tune with college football I will point out that that for a program to have a “violation” is roughly like getting a speeding ticket. The complexity of the NCAA rules for college athletics and to whom it applies requires schools to have compliance officers to monitor what the athletes do. I know because I taught at one of those schools and taught many of those athletes. Example, during one of my summer classes early in my career I bought soft drinks for a number of the students in the class, a couple of which were football players. The next day the athletes paid me back the money because otherwise it was a violation of NCAA rules. So, yes there are schools who have violations. Some of them because they are dealing with 18 year old kids who don’t understand all the rules.
The case of Miami is that of what is called major, flagrant violations by people who knew better. From my experience of being around a major college athletic program, and assisting in their recruiting in a limited way, incidents like Miami are an aberration. Theirs is on the order that got SMU out of college football altogether for several years. That is a major penalty to a program that has invested millions into their program in anticipation of revenue that won’t be there. There is also the problem of winning back the trust of NCAA officials at some point to restart the program in order to start recruiting again 4 or 5 years down the line. A case in point is that SMU has not been a relevant program in college football since their “death penalty”.