U. of Miami fooball program in deep deep shiz

[URY914]

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.



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, which the booster has said was entirely comprised of Ponzi funds.



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, Vince Wilfork and Jon Beason, 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


NCAA eyes booster's claims Miami players took cash - NCAA Football - CBSSports.com

http://sports.yahoo.com/investigations/news?slug=cr-renegade_miami_booster_details_illicit_benefits_08 1611
The yahoo sports story is what I cut and pasted above. The whole story is on Yahoo Sports.

[chocolatelab]

this is ugly.

[Noah930]

Why would you have to provide/fund an abortion for a football player?

[URY914]

Originally Posted by Noah930

Why would you have to provide/fund an abortion for a football player?

"Abortion: In one instance, Shapiro described taking a player to the Pink Pony strip club and paying for a dancer to engage in sex with the athlete. In the ensuing weeks, Shapiro said the dancer called one of his security providers and informed him that the player had gotten her pregnant during the incident. Shapiro said he gave the dancer $500 to have an abortion performed, without notifying the player of the incident.

“I was doing him a favor,” the booster said. “That idiot might have wanted to keep [the baby].”

Due to the sensitivity of the allegation, Yahoo! Sports has chosen not to name the player allegedly involved."

[sammyg2]

If this is true, and assuming the NCAA gives them punishment that is proportionate to what they did to USC, Miami will loose every scholarship for the next 800 years and won't be eligible for a bowl game until the year 3078.

But they won't. SEC treams typically don't have to live up to the same standards.

Overheard in an SEC classroom for remedial english, a professor said "today we're going to study punctuation. Can anyone tell me what comes at the end of the sentence?"
An SEC football player raised his hand and said, "the appeal".

Now we all know that's a joke and didn't happen. An SEC football player would never attend an actual class.

[Seahawk]

I, for one, am shocked, nay, dismayed, my faith on the rocks of poor judgment.

You could have knocked me over with a feather.

The U is in the ACC, however.

[widebody911]

Originally Posted by URY914

"Abortion: In one instance, Shapiro described taking a player to the Pink Pony strip club and paying for a dancer to engage in sex with the athlete. In the ensuing weeks, Shapiro said the dancer called one of his security providers and informed him that the player had gotten her pregnant during the incident. Shapiro said he gave the dancer $500 to have an abortion performed, without notifying the player of the incident.

Ah, the classic 'baby-momma' shakedown.

[pwd72s]

I'm shocked, shocked mind you...

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

I, for one, am shocked, nay, dismayed, my faith on the rocks of poor judgment.

You could have knocked me over with a feather.

The U is in the ACC, however.

Oops. My bad. I thought they went from an indy to the SEC but that were't right.



I found this interesting from wiki:

Miami ended the season with a 46–3 Cotton Bowl Classic victory over No. 3 Texas in the 1991 Cotton Bowl Classic in which the team was penalized a bowl- and school-record 16 times for 202 yards, including nine unsportsmanlike conduct or personal foul penalties.[60] On one play, Randal Hill scored on a 48-yard touchdown reception and continued to sprint out of the end zone and up the Cotton Bowl tunnel, where he then pretended to shoot at the Longhorns with imaginary pistols.[25] The program was widely criticized for its conduct, with Will McDonough of the Boston Globe likening the Cotton Bowl Classic display to a "wilding" and Bill Walsh calling it "the most disgusting thing [he'd] ever seen in college sports."[25] After the season, the NCAA responded with the so-called "Miami Rule", which made it a 15-yard penalty to engage in excessive celebration or flagrant taunting.[25][61]

on December 20, 1995 the NCAA announced that Miami would be subject to severe sanctions for numerous infractions within the athletic department. Among the sanctions was a one-year ban from postseason participation and a scholarship reduction of 31 over a three year period beginning in 1996.

In 1994, Tony Russell, a former UM academic advisor, pleaded guilty to helping more than 80 student athletes, 57 of whom were football players, falsify Pell Grant applications in exchange for kickbacks from the players themselves. The scandal dated all the way back to 1989 and secured more than $220,000 in federal grant money. Federal officials later said that Russell had engineered "perhaps the largest centralized fraud ... ever committed" in the history of the Pell Grant program.[69][70]

In late 1995, the NCAA concluded that, in addition to the fraudulent Pell Grants facilitated by Russell, the university had also provided or allowed over $400,000 worth of other, improper payments to Miami football players. The NCAA also found that the university had failed to wholly implement its drug testing program, and permitted three football student-athletes to compete without being subject to the required disciplinary measures specified in the policy. Finally, the NCAA concluded, the university had lost institutional control over the football program.[71] Miami docked itself seven scholarships as part of a self-imposed sanction in 1995, and the NCAA took away another 24 scholarships over the next two years. As a result of the scandal, Sports Illustrated's Alexander Wolff wrote a cover story that Miami should at least temporarily shut down its football program.[69] Further, On June 21, 1996, Miami football players broke into the apartment of the captain of Miami's track team and struck him repeatedly. In response, Davis suspended three key players for the coming 1996 season. Davis also suspended two other players who were involved in separate violent incidents.[72]

[RWebb]

well, this puts the minor problems with the USC program into perspective, doesn't it?

and the USC issues put the UO issues into perspective

sammy's comments about the SEC are... um accurate, if a bit understated

[URY914]

This story is a bit dfferent than most of the well known NCAA invesigations. In most the NCAA steps in on thier own or is tipped off of violations. The booster(s) will circle the wagons and cover up, burn the reciepts, delete the photos and lie to protect themselves and the program. Not here. This time it is the booster that is singing and has the proof. It is as if a mob boss decided to rat on the family. This guy has nothing to lose or gain.

This is not good for the Canes, at all.