Someday I hope that some sports historian is able to write a history explaining how the southern powers got away with this, when everyone in the business knew about it, and essentially no other schools could without the NCAA trying to thrash them. I don't read sports history books, but I'd read that one. (The discrepancy in NCAA reaction to our stupid, and from a prof's angle pretty minor, term paper fiasco vs this player/family buying constant behavior is criminal.) ... and the latest Deon Sanders vs Nick Saban vs Jimbo Fisher cry-babying and name-calling, while liberally (by their different overt/covert methods) grabbing cookies openly from the jar, breaks standards of hypocrisy. Someday all "championships*" from the "Southern Era of professionalism" should get asterisks. Each of these guys are excellent Businessmen --- they're really good at "anything goes for the bottom line." I couldn't gripe if everyone felt that they could do the same things, but obviously they DON'T think so.
This is one of my favorite written pieces related to college football (even though it's written by a notorious ND hater/troll):
Meet the bag man: 10 rules for paying college players
The SEC getting away with what was pretty obvious cheating/pay-for-play boils down to two things:
1. They had it down to a total hands-off science for coaches and staffers. They were almost never at risk, and made sure there were no paper trails.
2. In the rare instances where staff/coaches were directly involved, or if there WAS a paper trail somehow... all you do is refuse to cooperate with the NCAA. It has no teeth unless you cooperate and incriminate yourself. Plea the fifth, tell them to go pound sand, dare them to try and do anything at all without you incriminating yourself... the SEC and others have proven that the NCAA actually can't do it.
Upstanding institutions like ND had/have no reason to get themselves in trouble when they could handle things internally, but morality leads to them following the rules and putting themselves at the mercy of a totally inept and corrupt NCAA. The NCAA has *very few* opportunities to actually met out what they view as justice. They are constantly getting their asses handed to them in court. So when a school like ND serves themselves up on a silver platter, showing deference and hoping for a break from the committee for good behavior... they get jack shit in return, and get the hammer instead.
It's like that old saying, something along the lines of "Alabama cheated so bad that some other poor school that self-reports is going to get the death penalty."
