Wolff surfaces; SI joins elitists

You just knew he’d read his ugly head at some point. He’s been in hiding too long to not surface now.

After spending the better part of the past decade and a half writing about hockey, basketball, cycling and the Olympics, Sports Illustrated journalist Alexander Wolff has crawled out of his bin Laden-type cave to chime in on the Miami Hurricanes scandal, eight days after the fact. How timely.

Wolff made his name back in June 1995 when writing an open letter to then-UM president Edward ‘Tad’ Foote, demanding he shut down the football program.

Sanctions were looming sixteen years ago due Pell Grant fraud, which included eighty student athletes (fifty-seven football players) and was facilitated by a former UM academic advisor. The scandal went on for five years, with over $220,000 in federal grant money funneled illegally. Beyond that it was found that upwards of $400,000 worth of improper payments were specifically made to Miami football players.

In the pre-Internet days, the term “lack of institutional control” had real meaning as it was a term handed down from the NCAA – and based on what took place in Coral Gables between the late 80s and early 90s , it was hard to argue.

These past few weeks L.O.I.C. and “death penalty” has become something every media idiot and sports blogger throws around like “two-game suspension”.

As expected, Wolff went there. The same guy who called for the end of ‘The U’ in 1995 certainly isn’t going to do an about face with all that’s recently been reported.

Equally as expected, Wolff brought nothing new to the table. Like so many before him, the SI columnist points to the sensational Yahoo! article and the sordid details that grabbed headlines, yet remain unproven. Strippers. Hookers. An abortion. Cash bounties for injuring opposing players. Wolff is doing his best Charles Robinson, trying to re-write last week’s tale, instead of offering a fresh take and viable solutions.

Even worse, Wolff stands on his moral soapbox and not only insists that UM president Donna Shalala disband the program, but that she forms a one-woman army and uses her “substantial influence” to force the NCAA into righting their many wrongs.

Sure, that’s how the real world works. A university’s president willingly shuts down a multi-million dollar football program and puts all her day-to-day duties on hold to fight the corrupt NCAA, calling in favors on Capitol Hill. Seems Wolff sees Shalala as part Erin Brokovich, part Terminator. Someone in Hollywood, get busy on a script.

Wolff asks Shalala to overhaul the compliance process, to fight for “fiscal sanity”, to challenge the bowl system and to “bring the hammer down” regarding the NCAA toughening penalties for rule breakers. (“Stay on them [the NCAA] to make sure it gets done.”)

Let’s call this piece was it was — an open letter to NCAA president Mark Emmert. Wolff just didn’t have the stones to address it to him, so he piled on Shalala as it’s the trendy, go-to move of the week.

No, the onus is on Emmert to fix everything Wolff logically laid out – not the president of a private university down south in Coral Gables. The same university that has become a top fifty school as of late and one whose football program had the nation’s third-best Academic Progress Rate last year. A program that has reformed, when looking back at the scandal of the mid-90s that almost brought UM football down.

Wolff quotes Nevin Shapiro, stating that cheating is even worse in the SEC where “the money is an endless river”, yet again he focuses on leading a witch hunt against the equivalent of a “mom and pop” university in comparison to a Florida, Alabama or LSU.

Big money schools that put winning above academics. Football factories that sweep arrests under the rug. The Gators did it thirty-plus times when Urban Meyer was head coach, but two national titles and Heisman-winning posterboy Tim Tebow deflected the attention off of AK-47s, drug possession, aggravated assault, DUI, battery, stalking, domestic violence, burglary, violation of a sexual restraining order and a handful of other gems.

SEC hijinx rolls on, most recently a few states away in Louisiana where four LSU football players beat down a US Marine last Thursday night in Baton Rouge.

Starting Tigers’ quarterback Jordan Jefferson and three teammates were said to be involved in the melee, where Jefferson allegedly kicked Andrew Lowery in the face.

Lowery suffered contusions to the head, nose and hands and was knocked unconscious. He’s said to have been playing the role of Good Samaritan, attempting to break up a bar fight.

Aside from Jefferson and teammates (brawl buddies) Jarvis Landry, Chris Davenport and Josh Johns, upwards of fifty LSU football players were said to have broken curfew last Thursday night.

To Shapiro’s point about that endless flow of SEC money, it should be noted that LSU players were allowed to push off their meeting with police until early this week and the school brought in high-powered attorney Nathan Fisher, who has helped past Tigers – pro-bono, of course. (LSU insists that Fisher will be paid this time, in effort to avoid any trouble with … you guessed it … the NCAA.)

Late night bar brawls in Louisiana, a star athlete, an injured Marine and a big time Southern attorney? Sounds more like a John Grisham novel than college football, but this is what’s become of the once simple, now big money game we all love, but are growing to loathe.

If Jefferson doesn’t start against Oregon next week, a loss could result in the Tigers not reaching the BCS as an at-large, should they not earn a berth as SEC champs.

And so the money trail goes.

Like Miami situation, jumping to conclusions with the LSU would be irresponsible. For all we know, the Marine started it by head-butting Jefferson’s shoe.

Either way, you hope the truth finds it way out – in both Coral Gables and Baton Rouge. But while the NCAA wraps it’s full body cavity on ‘The U’, a situation of corruption and cover-up seems to be underway with LSU’s latest skirmish.

Pushing off a sit-down with police, giving players a handful of days to corroborate their stories while being coached by a powerful lawyer (and arguably a Tigers superfan) all in the heart of win-at-all-costs SEC country? This type of behavior seems all too familiar in the conference (and in Baton Rouge, as well – the Ryan Perrilloux situation ring a bell?)

The point with the LSU sidebar; the fact a new scandal is waiting around every corner and a reminder that college football as a whole is broken – and it all starts at the top.

A greed-based system that puts winning above everything – and is rewarded for doing so as conference championships and BCS games drive that root-of-all-evil TV revenue, causing blind eyes to be turned nationally multiple times a season.

It’s not about isolated incidents and individual programs nor is it about picking one university to take the fall for many.

Same story, different decade and again Wolff has missed the point and has gotten it wrong.

The game of college football is broken, not the University of Miami and if anyone deserves to be called out, it’s the second-year NCAA president — not the president of a small private university.

Shalala has a proven track record at UM and has built her legacy. Time for President Emmert to build his – not with shortcuts and scapegoats, but by rolling up his sleeves and doing what it takes to fix a money-driven, corrupt and broken system.

Emmert is the only one with the power to make change and whether he does or doesn’t is solely on him. Aim your venom somewhere else, Wolff. It’s again falling on deaf ears here.

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