I absolutely love this tread and I can't believe more people aren't posting. The more you read about this case, the more you realized how out of control college athletics has become on every level. Are the players corrupt, or has the arms race in the form of building one facility after another caused this environment? College kids are college kids (not just athletes) and if you put a free hooker in front of one of them (imagine the quality of hooker one can get in Maimi), there is going to be some sex going on in 99% of the cases. College kids are not able to resist the temtations presented to them. A kid who grows up in a ghetto, in most cases, is not going to turn down a ride on a million dollar yacht in Miami, or a free $1,000 per hour hooker, or a dinner at a high end steak house, or anything else ("Is there a bigger racial divide in American than the difference between the players playing college football and the high end donors?" Mrs. GP1, the luckiest woman in the world).
Universities have spent millions in building facilities. Ashland University just spent $20 on athletic facilities for a D II school....a D II school... and $70 million on school buildings...talk about a school that doesn't have its priorities straight. The money doesn't fall out of the sky...it has to be raised. At a school like Miami (and there are others like Miami), there aren't that many high end donors so if you find one, you let him basically do whatever he wants in order to keep up with the Jones. If you don't, you are finished.
What's the ncaa's solution to this problem it doesn't see as a problem? Create more rules preventing the kids who have no chance of turning down a free hooker from getting the free hooker. It seems to me that the arms race has created the problem, not the players. If the people at the ncaa had a combined half a brain, they would restrict the "building processes" at these schools that are at the core of the problem. The players aren't at the core of the problem. The problems are the athletic departments who haven't seen a stadium building project they would turn down and the ncaa who is obsessed with making college athletics bigger and bigger at any cost. Nobody will say it, but that's the problem. It's so out of control now that no control can be established and every off season we are going to hear these stories until the ncaa reforms or is eliminated. The main stories of college football are now about teams in a scandal and not, you know, actual college football. It's terrible for college football.
I agree with you 100%. The kids are not the problem. ESPN is an enabler for this crap. I watched their "Panel of experts" try and explain why the BCS should stay the other night, what a joke.