Go Skins Posted August 17, 2011 Report Share Posted August 17, 2011 [url="http://sports.yahoo.com/investigations/news?slug=cr-renegade_miami_booster_details_illicit_benefits_081611"]http://sports.yahoo.com/investigations/news?slug=cr-renegade_miami_booster_details_illicit_benefits_081611[/url] KEARNY, N.J. – A University of Miami booster, incarcerated for his role in a $930 million Ponzi scheme, has told Yahoo! Sports he provided thousands of impermissible benefits to at least 72 athletes from 2002 through 2010. 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. Also among the revelations were damning details of Shapiro’s co-ownership of a sports agency – Axcess Sports & Entertainment – for nearly his entire tenure as a Hurricanes booster. The same agency that signed two first-round picks from Miami, [url="http://sports.yahoo.com/investigations/news?slug=ys-vince_wilfork_allegations"]Vince Wilfork[/url] and [url="http://sports.yahoo.com/investigations/news?slug=ys-jon_beason_allegations"]Jon Beason[/url], and recruited dozens of others while Shapiro was allegedly providing cash and benefits to players. In interviews with federal prosecutors, Shapiro said many of those same players were also being funneled cash and benefits by his partner at Axcess, then-NFL agent and current UFL commissioner Michael Huyghue. Shapiro said he also made payments on behalf of Axcess, including a $50,000 lump sum to Wilfork, as a recruiting tool for the agency. In an effort to substantiate the booster’s claims, Yahoo! Sports audited approximately 20,000 pages of financial and business records from his bankruptcy case, more than 5,000 pages of cell phone records, multiple interview summaries tied to his federal Ponzi case, and more than 1,000 photos. Nearly 100 interviews were also conducted with individuals living in six different states. In the process, documents, photos and 21 human sources – including nine former Miami players or recruits, and one former coach – corroborated multiple parts of Shapiro’s rule-breaking. While the NCAA declined comment, Miami associate AD for communications Chris Freet told Yahoo! Sports the school has been cooperating with an NCAA probe to unravel claims the booster has made to investigators. He added that the university unsuccessfully sought an interview with the booster last summer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jza10304 Posted August 18, 2011 Report Share Posted August 18, 2011 What pisses me off as a Canes fan about this is that we weren't even winning with all this shit going on. At least give us a title like USC (and soon Auburn) or contention like Georgia, OSU... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sois Posted August 18, 2011 Report Share Posted August 18, 2011 LOL yeah, no title = not worth it. I'm glad Leach didn't get that job now. I bet Golden feels like a sucker, poor bastard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bengals1181 Posted August 18, 2011 Report Share Posted August 18, 2011 the OSU - Miami game is about to get quite a bit less star studded. This apparently involves some current Canes, including Jacory Harris. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmishBengalFan Posted August 18, 2011 Report Share Posted August 18, 2011 The SMU "Death Penalty" option for Miami is on the table... Linky: [url="http://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/08/17/is-a-miami-death-penalty-the-ncaas-only-option/related/"]Is a Miami death penalty the NCAA’s only option?[/url] [quote]NBC Sports, Posted by John Taylor on August 17, 2011, 12:22 PM EDT Roughly 16 years after SMU was hit with the infamous “death penalty” that crippled their football program for nearly a quarter of a century, then-Florida president John Lombardi said that the NCAA would do anything it could going forward to avoid sentencing another school to a similar fate. “SMU taught the committee that the death penalty is too much like the nuclear bomb,” Lombardi said in 2002. “It’s like what happened after we dropped the [atomic] bomb in World War II. The results were so catastrophic that now we’ll do anything to avoid dropping another one.” A decade later, thanks to an explosive exposé by Yahoo! sports, the nuclear option appears to be back on the table, and it could force the NCAA to play the football version of Harry Truman once again. [color=#ff0000][b]The level of malfeasance alleged in the investigative piece by convicted felon Nevin Shapiro is truly staggering[/b][/color] and is only rivaled in recent times by the infamous SMU scandal, when the Mustangs were Pony Express’d back to the football dark ages in the mid-eighties. Shapiro, who once had a players lounge named in his honor at the Coral Gables school, alleges he gave impermissible benefits that by his estimation totaled in the millions and millions of dollars to more than five dozen Hurricane football players — including a dozen current ones — over an eight-year period beginning in 2001. [color=#ff0000][b]Cash, prostitutes, jewelry, clothing, electronics, yachts, mansions, strip club junkets and, in one instance, an abortion[/b][/color]. You name it, Shapiro alleges he provided it for many, many a Hurricane player. Perhaps most damning is the Yahoo! report claims [color=#ff0000][b]four former football assistants as well as three football support staff members had direct knowledge [/b][/color]of or participated in the violating of multiple NCAA rules, including sending high school recruits to Shapiro’s multi-million dollar mansion or accompanying Shapiro and recruits to strip clubs. Shapiro’s physical confrontation with UM’s head of compliance in the press box of a 2007 game wrought a background check by the university, which revealed he was the co-owner of a sports representation agency. Still, [color=#ff0000][b]the university did nothing[/b].[/color] Juxtapose those Miami allegations against the SMU case two-and-a-half-decades ago and, more recently, USC. Already banned from bowl games in 1985 and 1986 as well as any television appearances for the latter year due to recruiting violations committed by boosters and at least one assistant, SMU was found in 1986 by the NCAA to have created a slush fund — which paid football players upwards of $700 a month — that was controlled by a booster and sanctioned by officials from the athletic department all the way through the school’s Board of Governors. For that, the NCAA canceled the Mustangs 1987 season — the school canceled the 1988 season as well due to lack of players — banned the school from bowl games and television appearances through the 1989 season, as well as stripping them of nearly 60 football scholarships over a four-year period. At first blush, the situation in Miami appears to be the work of a lone rogue booster who inexplicably flew underneath the school’s radar — allegedly — for eight years. SMU’s case was an organized, systematic pay-for-play scandal involving multiple layers of individuals both inside the athletic department and out, even bleeding into the political arena. Is that enough of a difference to keep the NCAA from pressing the nuclear button and leveling The U football program? If it’s looked at through a prism of blacks and whites, the allegations leveled against Miami are the worst to hit major college football since SMU in the mid-eighties and would appear to deserve something that approaches the same level of sanctions. As the NCAA has shown since [b][color=#ff0000]slapping near-historic sanctions on USC[/color][/b], though, the NCAA seems to work with varying shades of gray that only they can see. And comprehend. To illustrate that very point, the Trojans were stripped of 30 scholarships over a three-year period and banned from appearing in bowl games for two after the NCAA found[b][color=#ff0000] one player [/color][/b]— Reggie Bush — and/or his family had received in the neighborhood of $300,000 from [b][color=#ff0000]two would-be sports marketers/felons [/color][/b]while he was a running back at the school. [b][color=#ff0000]One USC assistant [/color][/b]— not four as alleged in the Yahoo! Miami piece, or multiple members of the institution as found in the SMU case — [b][color=#ff0000]and one two-minute phone conversation [/color][/b]led to the sanctions that have set the Trojans football program back at least a couple of years if not more. After handing the Trojans some of the stiffest sanctions since SMU was obliterated from the football map, [color=#ff0000][b]Paul Dee, chair of the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions[/b][/color], said the following when it comes to a school’s responsibility for dealing with outside influences on student-athletes: “The real issue here is if you have high‑profile players, your enforcement staff has to monitor those students at a higher level. It’s extraordinarily important that the people that are likely to be receiving these kinds of interactions from people outside the institution are also those same people who are going to provide a reward somewhere down the road. [b][color=#ff0000]So high‑profile players demand high‑profile compliance.”[/color][/b] [b][color=#ff0000]Dee was the athletic director at the University of Miami during the time Shapiro was allegedly lavishing his student-athletes with gifts, cash and services[/color].[/b] Regardless of whether it’s too much like the nuclear bomb, and the catastrophic results Lombardi referred to be damned, the NCAA needs to drop another one on the Miami football program if they have any real desire to truly change the culture as they’ve openly professed in recent months. What would that entail when it comes to the ‘Canes? Miami’s situation — if the allegations are proven, it should be noted — would seem to fall somewhere between SMU and USC, but leaning decidedly toward the former side in terms of severity. Leaning enough to warrant sanctions similar to what SMU received? Certainly this trumps Bush’s financial masterpiece, setting the bar for sanctions to come in somewhere well above what USC received. If that involves something close to the death penalty, so be it; at some point, there have to be significant repercussions for programs that don’t demand high-profile compliance for high-profile players. One way or the other, though, the NCAA needs to take their hands out from under their backsides and show that what they’re spewing publicly aren’t merely words lacking any kind of meaningful action behind them. One SMU is too many. Two of them calls for a significant change to the structure of collegiate athletics. [b][color=#ff0000]And a sweeping change to the hypocrisy that Dee’s involvement on both sides fully displays[/color][/b].[/quote] I believe the NCAA should and will go nuclear on Miami. Anything less and they undermine their own credibility, especially since the Infractions Committee that Dee chairs was responsible for the huge penalties imposed on USC for violations committed mainly by one student, one assistant, two supporters, and one phone call. Comparing the scope of those infractions to what happened at Miami under Dee's watch as Athletic Director - the NCAA won't have any choice but to nuke Miami or risk losing control of college athletics completely. And if nothing else, maybe their post-nuclear graduates will actually learn the name of their school rather than just regurgitate the name of the letter on the side of their helmets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Go Skins Posted August 18, 2011 Author Report Share Posted August 18, 2011 Just speaking from someone that lives in the Washington, DC area, some of the George Mason fans I know have been wondering if Larranaga knew about this before bolting. He took his entire coaching staff with him. No one thought after he turned down Providence in '06 that he would leave Fairfax. He could have a lawsuit on his hands depending on how this plays out. I know basketball hasn't been mentioned much since this story broke, but my hunch is it is a matter of time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmishBengalFan Posted August 18, 2011 Report Share Posted August 18, 2011 Isn't Miami's President former Clinton HHS Secretary Donna Shalala? Didn't she take over in 2001, and doesn't she have a relationship with Shapiro as well? For heaven's sake, if the corruption at "The U" goes all the way up to her office, is there any chance of ANY of their programs escaping this scandal? And what about Wisconsin? Shalala was Chancellor there immediately before joining Clinton's cabinet - what potential spillover to UW will there be if Shalala followed the same business style then as now? The only thing she's remembered for there was [url="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/govt/admin/shalala.htm"]her failed attempts to outlaw free speech and impose quotas on # of minority students[/url]. When the Washington Post calls someone "too liberal", that's a big deal. And let's not (yet) talk about her involvement in the [url="http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/06/12/Countrywide-Loan-Scandal"]Countrywide Financial Loan Scandal[/url] while at Miami. She's seems to be as corrupt and as misguided as they come - and a perfect fit for "The U". They're likely to get exactly what they deserve down there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmishBengalFan Posted August 18, 2011 Report Share Posted August 18, 2011 [img]http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/shalala.jpg[/img] Nevin Shapiro said this photo was taken during a basketball fundraiser in 2008, in which the booster donated $50,000 to the program. From left to right are men's basketball coach Frank Haith, Shapiro and University of Miami president Donna Shalala. Shalala is holding Shapiro's donation check. Oh, and there's Smeagol, doing his Shalala impression. Source: [url="http://sports.yahoo.com/investigations/news?slug=dw-wetzel_miami_scandal_scene_081711"]Yahoo Sports[/url], 8/17/11 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jza10304 Posted August 19, 2011 Report Share Posted August 19, 2011 You have a special hard-on for Miami? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
#22 Posted August 19, 2011 Report Share Posted August 19, 2011 I am pulling for the death penalty. Off-topic: Donna Shalala was Clinton's director of Health and Human Services. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bengals1181 Posted August 21, 2011 Report Share Posted August 21, 2011 ESPN is doing a roundtable right now of current and former coaches and AD's, as well as some ESPN analysts. Urban Meyer just had an interesting quote: "The system isn't broken, human behavior is." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.