Scandal at University of Miami

[Da Coach]

Yahoo Sports just posted a story about massive cheating at University of Miami. Most of the cheating alleagtions apply to the football program, but the basketball program, under than coach Frank Haith, is also involved. Haith is alleged to have known about illegal benefits going to players.
Haith is now the head coach at Missouri.

http://www.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/26283066/31355941

Original Yahoo Sports article (long article)-

http://sports.yahoo.com/investigations/news;_ylt=Aq8MoPFagsaISoBReQMC_EE7MuB_?slug=cr-renegade_miami_booster_details_illicit_benefits_081611

It relates to the central character of this scandal, Nevin Shapiro, who was a booster for the school tied to Ponzi money. Shapiro provided players with everything from cash to food to lodging to yacht rides to prostitutes and more. The worst of it all: Shapiro and other sources in the Yahoo! story implicate football and basketball coaches with knowing -- and active participation! -- this wrongdoing was going on.

Shapiro said he violated NCAA rules with the knowledge or direct participation of at least six coaches – Clint Hurtt, Jeff Stoutland and Aubrey Hill on the football staff, and Frank Haith, Jake Morton and Jorge Fernandez on the basketball staff. Multiple sources told Yahoo! Sports Shapiro also violated NCAA rules with football assistant Joe Pannunzio, although the booster refused to answer any questions about that relationship. Shapiro also named assistant football equipment manager Sean Allen as someone who engaged in rulebreaking, and equipment managers Ralph Nogueras and Joey Corey as witnesses to some of his impropriety.

Morton is now an assistant at Western Kentucky; Fernandez is currently an assistant at Marshall. Here's where Haith and Morton are implicated in a bad, bad way: the payment of recruits. One recruit, specifically. More from Robinson's report:

The booster said his role went one step farther with the basketball program, when he paid $10,000 to help secure the commitment of recruit DeQuan Jones. Shapiro said the transaction was set up by assistant coach Jake Morton in 2007 who acted as the conduit for the funds, and was later acknowledged by head coach Frank Haith in a one-on-one conversation.Shapiro also entertained then-prominent AAU basketball coach Moe Hicks in October of 2008, with a nightclub visit that was attended by both Morton and Fernandez.

[sousaman2089]

You'd think, of all the colleges in this country, that the U would know NOT to do these things. Sadly, the NCAA itself can really do anything to curb this kind of stuff. I mean they literally killed a football program (SMU) and people are still doing this stuff.

[BUFanatic]

That's why it's the Catholics vs. CONVICTS!

[Da Coach]

The NCAA should just hire Yahoo Sports to do their investigations and enforcements of rules since the NCAA never seems to find anything unless it's dropped in their laps (or unless it involves the little guys like Alabama A&M).

[TylerDurden]

This screams "death penalty" for a couple of Miami's teams.*



















*if it's all true. I have no reason to believe it isn't true, but the guy is serving 20 years for fraud, FWIW.

Edit: I imagine Miami is going to spin this as one disgruntled booster with an axe to grind and that they didn't know what he was doing. That probably isn't the case, but I'm guessing that's going to be the defense.

[Da Coach]

Yes, that is true. But unlike a lot of cheating scandals where everyone denies everything, he is the key booster involved in the impermissable benefits that were being heaped on the Miami athletes, and he is talking and freely admitting the illegal acts he knows about. There is no question he was very close to the coaches and athletes. The Yahoo writer did a lot of fact-checking, and almost everything checks out. It appears he is telling the truth. The fact that he is a felon makes the whole thing even sleazier.

[sousaman2089]

Why is it major colleges in large metropolitan cities are always getting in trouble? USC, UNLV, Miami, SMU, even older incidents like CCNY. They seem to be the programs with repeated incidents.

And no one told Al Golden that this stiff was going on before he took the job for head football coach. That's crummy.

[tornado]

Miami names the players they say are involved..could there be more?
the very guy at the center of this scandal, Nevin Shapiro, claims he paid far, far more Miami football players...
"....Shapiro, who is now serving a 20-year prison sentence for masterminding a $930 million scam, provided 72 football players
- 65 of whom suited up for the Hurricanes _ with cars, money, gifts and even prostitutes between 2002 and 2010.
Shapiro's claims also implicate 10 Miami football and basketball coaches, none of whom are still employed by the university."

http://www.pantagraph.com/sports/college/article_5e5f9381-46aa-57d4-812c-6736cba3e4ce.html

[Da Coach]

Great article about the hypocrisy of the NCAA

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/blog/the_dagger/post/LBSU-president-The-hypocrisy-of-the-NCAA-makes?urn=ncaab-wp4342&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

[tornado]

NCAA finally finds a way to let Miami completely skate on all these obvious violations that have been pushed to the back burner for a couple years...

So we all know there's massive cheating at Miami -- everyone's on the take, players being paid, academic fraud..

but the NCAA "muffs" the investigation - so I suspect Miami will go free and get nothing for all this?

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/ncaa-falls-flat-face-announces-improper-conduct-miami-202219480--ncaaf.html

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/lopresti/2013/01/24/ncaa-miami-enforcement-mark-emmert/1860595/

hmmm... throwing itself under the bus to save Miami?? The big time payoffs must have reached all the way to the top of NCAA?

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/blog/bruce-feldman/21604690/timing-of-ncaas-eyes-opening-is-curious

[Da Coach]

Expecting the NCAA to investigate itself and come up with honest and legitimate findings is like expecting The Godfather, Michael Corleone, to investigate all the mob killings his thugs were responsible for. There is exactly 0% chance they will find or correct any of the corruption that is so obviously oozing out of every orifice at the NCAA. Miami deserves the Death Penalty for the massive and repeated corruption under corrupt Athletic Director Paul Dee and President Donna Shalala, who both had to know the illegal stuff that was going on at Miami, and the sleazy people they were doing business with.

[SFP]

Why is it major colleges in large metropolitan cities are always getting in trouble? USC, UNLV, Miami, SMU, even older incidents like CCNY. They seem to be the programs with repeated incidents.

And no one told Al Golden that this stiff was going on before he took the job for head football coach. That's crummy.

I agree that there seems to be a bigger sleaze factor in those cities. LA, LV and Miami but the cheating in the NCAA goes beyond those. I'm sure Tornado can name more then a handful but one comes to mind is Kentucky.

[ChewaBrave]

Obviously Kentucky in addition to those urban areas, but more recently UNC, and UConn, and Baylor, Ohio State, Auburn, Mississippi State (and lots of stuff floating around Oregon as of late). If you include institutions with recent major lapses in judgement, you can include Penn State.

[tornado]

any and all NCAA investigations and penalties are dependent on a lot of OBJECTIVE factors...
Those include the nature of and scope of the action that is an NCAA violation..
plus the evidence of whether it was intentional, hidden, or even enabled by the people at top...
..but it seems there are also vague, subjective factors that play into it...


So - even though NCAA is a private organization whose bylaws allow it to investigate & discipline members....they far prefer that schools follow the rules and not cheat & if something is found - that the schools themselves be good enough to check and find the violations and straighten things out by themselves.


That all being said...

-some of the biggest repeat violators who have massive intentional cheating just to gain advantage - who also do everything they can to duck, hide, lie, and pretend it doesn't exist....
those guys when they get caught sometimes seem to get pretty easy penalties.

-then along comes a far smaller case where NCAA does its own vigorous investigation, never even allows the school to check things out for themselves or straighten the minor stuff up...
and even when they DON'T find much - they keep digging until they find a small, "unintentional", and "inadvertent" (their own words) violation..
then NCAA comes down even harder on those guys with the lesser rules violations that they did on the "big guys".

So in all my years of being a college basketball fan - perhaps the single most unpleasant taste I have is
the unfairness that I perceive in their enforcement ...
when reading stories about the NCAA, their investigations, and their selective and unfair penalties - and how it has all but enabled some schools to literally get away with serious stuff while repeatedly nailing smaller schools for far more trivial stuff.

[tornado]

the scandal at Miami may take the current Mizzou coach down -

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaab-the-dagger/report-missouri-coach-frank-haith-facing-notice-allegations-234621399--ncaab.html