Now it’s Miami’s turn

Opinion: August 24, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Los Angeles Times: Scratch a die-hard University of Southern California Trojans football fan, and he bleeds grievance. Ever since a scandal involving former USC running back Reggie Bush resulted in the school being handed one of the harshest penalties ever by the NCAA, boosters and team insiders have been scanning sanction decisions against other universities for signs of unfairness. That’s not quite what they got Wednesday, but the allegations of severe improprieties in the University of Miami’s football program are certain to fuel even more resentment of college athletics’ organizing body.

The case against Miami, in the words of Florida-based sports attorney Michael Buckner, “makes the USC case look like USC was selling Girl Scout cookies.” Former Miami booster Nevin Shapiro told Yahoo! Sports that between 2002 and 2010, he provided at least 72 athletes, mostly football players, with such impermissible benefits as cash, cars, jewelry, prostitute-packed parties and even an abortion for a strip-club dancer who had been impregnated by a Miami player.

When athletes are caught breaking NCAA rules, as former star Bush did by accepting cash from sports marketers and making a deal that allowed his family to live rent-free in a house near San Diego, it’s not uncommon for university officials to claim that they were unaware of the violations and that they can’t effectively monitor the hundreds of athletes in their sports programs.

The NCAA said it wouldn’t buy that excuse. Paul Dee, then the committee’s chairman, said, “High-profile players demand high-profile compliance.” And yet evidence now suggests that dozens of high-profile athletes at Miami were being feted right under the nose of Dee, who was the school’s athletic director from 1993 to 2008.