Well, Yahoo! Sports has done it again. And like any summer blockbuster, it’s just as big, just as bad and just as explosive as anything we’ve seen in a long time.
After an 11-month investigation, Yahoo! Sports investigative reporter Charles Robinson was back at it Tuesday, this time sharing the sordid details of a near decade-long association between super-booster-turned-imprisoned-Ponzi-scheme-con-artist Nevin Shapiro and the University of Miami football and basketball programs.
To say the report is shocking is an understatement. It’s overwhelming. Quite frankly, I don’t even know where to begin to break it all down.
This from the Yahoo! report:
In 100 hours of jailhouse interviews during Yahoo!! Sports’ 11-month investigation, former 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.
Yes, you read that correctly.
What’s at play here is that Shapiro was nothing less than bankrolling the University of Miami football program on both ends of the stick. At one end, Shapiro was a booster dealing directly with the highest levels of administration and giving thousands of dollars to the university. On the other, he was putting clothes, cash, cars, women, jewelry and more in the hands of the highest-profile players on one of the highest-profile college football teams in the country. Not to mention that according to his claims, the coaching staffs of both the football and basketball team knew about his actions. And oh, this would also be a good time to mention that he awore the added hat of co-owner of the sports agency Access Sports & Entertainment, a major no-no for anyone associated with an NCAA athletics program.
To put it simply: Shit… meet fan.
First things first, credit here needs to go to Robinson and the staff at Yahoo!. No stone was left unturned in this investigation, and for the time being, few questions remain unanswered. As Robinson tweeted out upon the investigation being released, “We audited over 20,000 of Shapiro’s business docs, multiple years of credit card bills, 5,000 pages of cell bills and over 1,000 photos.” He then added, “We have corroborating sources, either human, document or photographic, on at least 72 Miami players or former recruits receiving benefits.” Good God. If this man didn’t get a promotion already, I’ll personally chip in for it.
But really, that last Tweet pretty much tells you everything you need to know right there: 72 players or former recruits receiving benefits. This is basically a college football armageddon.
According to Shapiro’s claims to Yahoo!, everything started following the 2001 season, when Shapiro gave Miami Heat playoff tickets to defensive end Andrew Williams. From there, Williams introduced Shapiro to his two teammates, Jerome McDougle and Cornelius Green. According to Shapiro, Green opened the door to essentially the rest of the Miami team.
“It really started with me developing a strong relationship with Corn. He was really like a queen bee of the players. Through Cornelius it was like I was meeting every single guy – almost every guy on the roster – [and] specifically the frontline players, the star players,” Shapiro told Yahoo!.
From there, here are a few snippets from Yahoo!’s investigating:
– Running back Tyrone Moss admitted to receiving $1,000 cash from Shapiro, and claims that he knew of other teammates who received likewise.
– Assistant football coaches, including Jeff Stoutland and Joe Pannuzio (both now at Alabama), Clint Hurtt (now at Louisville) and Aubrey Hill (now at Florida) were said to have delivered recruits directly to Shapiro for a sales pitch. Former Miami (and current Missouri coach) Frank Haith and an assistant were also aware of Shapiro’s payment of a recruit.
– Current Miami players who were said to have met with Shapiro during their recruitments include starting safety Ray Ray Armstrong, starting defensive end Olivier Vernon and Duron Dye.
– Other players who were said to have met with Shapiro who are now playing at other schools including Andre DeBose and Matt Patchan (Florida), Orson Charles (Georgia) and Jeff Godfrey (Central Florida)
– And of course, there were the hundreds of thousands of more dollars that Shapiro put in the hands of former and current Miami Hurricanes.
So now the questions become two-fold: Why is Shapiro spilling the beans, and what’s next for Miami?
To answer the first question, it seems as though this is Shapiro’s little chance for retribution after feeling wronged by some former players who he considered “friends.” Shapiro is currently in jail for his role in a $931 million Ponzi scheme, and when he asked former players for bail money and other favors, some were unwilling to help, prompting Shapiro’s snitching. Apparently, Shapiro has also been shopping a tell-all book for over a year, without any takers, before revealing his story to Yahoo!. My guess is that there are some publishing companies pretty upset they didn’t take him up on that.
(As for my personal thoughts on Shapiro, to steal a line from my colleague here at Crystal Ball Run Michael Felder, the best word to describe Shapiro here is “butt hurt.”)
From reading between the lines, Shapiro is a small man (literally and figuratively) who made up for his personal insecurities by trying to buy the affection of “the cool kids” (in this case, Miami’s football players). I found it quite telling that he considered himself this generation’s Luther Campbell, called himself “Lil Luke” in honor of Campbell and even put “bounties” out, which rewarded players with cash gifts for big hits and injuring opposing players. It was a similar system to one Campbell was alleged to have set up years before. To me, Shapiro screams out as the classic “follower, not leader.”
Unfortunately, I’m not articulating myself here as well as I’d like to, but one thing is clear: This was a man who used money to buy friendship and affection, and like too many people have learned in the real world, that doesn’t earn you any actual friendship, affection or, most importantly, respect.
Understand, I’m not saying what the Miami players did was right. By no means. There were rules in place, and they broke them. Plain and simple.
But at the same time, blowing the whistle on yourself (as Shapiro did) to get some form of revenge is shallow, callous and pathetic. If he wanted to spend the money to help a kid out or simply show him a good time, that’s fine. If he did it because he loved Miami football that much, I, on some level, respect that.
But to sell out this many people for some small form of gratification? All I can say to that is enjoy your time in prison, Mr. Shapiro.
Now to the bigger question: What’s going to happen with the NCAA?
Simply put, it’s impossible to say what will happen, but if everything that comes out from the report holds up to be true (and almost everything Yahoo! reports does), than we should be looking at sanctions unlike anything we’ve seen recently.
By now you’ve heard about the well-publicized Reggie Bush case, where he and his family accepted thousands of dollars in impermissible plane tickets, hotels, cars and even a house. The NCAA also claimed that former assistant Todd McNair knew about it as well, and there was the added effect that much like Yahoo!’s allegations against Miami, USC’s basketball program was involved as well. Former coach Tim Floyd allegedly paid O.J. Mayo $1,000 cash.
You also probably by now know the penalties that USC received: The athletics department was hit with a “Lack of Institutional Control” charge, and the football program was hit especially hard with massive scholarship reductions and a two-year bowl ban.
With that as a background, it’s hard not to see Miami getting hit with worse than what USC did. Understand that USC’s case primarily involved one football player and one basketball player. They were the highest profile in each sport, but the problems were isolated incidents, hardly a program-wide epidemic. In the case of Shapiro’s claims, you’re talking about 72 players (the number given by Yahoo!) over the course of eight years, with multiple assistant coaches, across sports in the know. This – by every stretch of the imagination – is worse than what happened at USC. As Felder said, “It’s Reggie Bush on steroids.”
Then, you’ve got to add in that this all happened under the watchful eye of the Miami athletics department.
Understand that in the USC case, Lloyd Lake was the proverbial no-good “street agent” who we’ve heard so much about. Well, what is going to happen in a case where Shapiro was also actively involved with the University of Miami’s athletic department and a donor who gave tens of thousands of dollars a year? What about the added effect that he was the co-owner of a sports agency at the same time? Simply put, this is substantially, significantly, overwhelmingly worse than what happened at USC. If this isn’t the dreaded one-two combination of “Lack of Institutional Control” and “Failure to Monitor,” it’s hard to say what is – again, assuming that everything in the report holds up to be true.
Speaking of which, there is an interesting final caveat to the Miami case that is so ironic, it should’ve been contrived in a Shakespearean play.
When the Trojans were hit with sanctions last summer, the chairman on the NCAA Committee on Infractions was a man named Paul Dee. That’d be the same Paul Dee who was also the University of Miami’s athletics director from 1993 until 2008. Following the NCAA investigation of USC, Dee even famously said, “High profile players demand high profile compliance.” Well these were some of the most high-profile players, at one of the most high-profile programs in the country. Now what? Is there any way that Miami proves they provided high-profile compliance? Given how ingrained Shapiro was in the program, it seems impossible.
Finally, here’s one more little kick in the balls if you’re a Miami fan: NCAA bylaws state that there’s a four-year statute of limitations on the ability to punish a school, meaning that they could’ve been – for the most part – in the clear. Unfortunately, there’s also a clause that may cause Miami to be hit with punishment for the breadth of Shapiro’s association with the school.
From the Yahoo! report:
“Perhaps most troubling is Shapiro’s sustained impropriety could trigger the NCAA’s “willful violations” exception to its four-year statute of limitations. Under bylaw 36.2.3, an investigation can expand beyond the statute if information reveals that an individual tied to a university has engaged in “a pattern of willful violations” over a sustained period beyond the previous four years.”
All told, this is just the beginning, of a long, drawn-out, painful and ugly process for the University of Miami.
As I mentioned on Twitter this evening, if we learned anything in the USC case, there’s nothing worse for a college football program than a crook with an axe to grind.
Nevin Shapiro certainly fits that bill. And the University of Miami is going to be paying for it.
Likely, for a very long time.
Follow Crystal Ball Run on Twitter @CrystalBallRun.
Follow Aaron Torres on Twitter @Aaron_Torres.
