How To Cheat In College Football: Where The Experts Went Wrong
With the current NCAA landscape littered with corruption and cautionary tales, it’s clear that college sports has a problem on its hand. But it’s not the problem you think. Cheating’s been going on for decades, after all. Why have schools gotten so bad at it?
Today Sports Illustrated’s Andy Staples sets the scene, then offers several solutions.
From Sports Illustrated, here’s what we’re looking at in the NCAA right now. It’s less educational than entertaining. The scale of college sports corruption is at an all-time high this year:
Oregon's program sits in the NCAA's cross hairs because the athletic department paid scouting service operator/recruiting middleman Will Lyles ... with a $25,000 check. North Carolina's football program has a date with the NCAA's Committee on Infractions because former defensive tackle Marvin Austin got too descriptive on Twitter. Jim Tressel is currently unemployed because of a series of e-mails. Bruce Pearl isn't coaching basketball at Tennessee because someone snapped a photo of a recruit at Pearl's house, which was inconvenient since Pearl told the NCAA the recruit hadn't been at his house. USC's depth chart is thinner than Kate Moss because no one bothered to pay off the wannabe agents who kept Reggie Bush and his family living the good life while Bush played for the Trojans. All these cases point to a serious crisis in college sports.
Coaches and administrators have forgotten how to cheat.
The solution? Well, Andy Staples lists a number of suggestions, including always paying in cash, never putting anything in writing, keeping a tight circle of conspirators, always paying in cash, and using a disposable cell phone (a season 3-level lesson from The Wire). And oh yeah, also, always pay in cash.
Because some fundamentals just cannot be repeated enough for all the slow learners in the room. As Staples points out, “Who the hell pays a street agent with a university-issued check? That’s like -- paying a street agent with a university-issued check.”
As for the rest of the NCAA? Read up at SI.com to avoid being next.
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