The NCAA and the Miami Hurricanes: Don't Hate the Player, Hate the Game

My name is Sam Slade, I am an enforcement investigator for the NCAA, and I have been handed a really big assignment.

No, not the University of Miami, think bigger. Way bigger.

So big that, in a different time,  the investigation into the Kennedy assassination would have been mothballed while I did my investigation.

So big that, after my investigation, I have been told that I am free to use the CIA’s witness protection program that they use to hide people from the witness protection program.

So who am I investigating? What are the infractions?

The NCAA. Paul Dee. Fraud and collusion.

How It Got Started

For those of you that don’t know, NCAA investigations are typically initiated by a member of the public who contacts the NCAA to report a potential rules violation.

Yes, a snitch.

Many times, the institution discovers a violation and reports its own violations to the enforcement staff. This is way more common now that YouTube, Twitter, the Internet, and really ignorant athletes pretty much ensure the cat is out of the bag before the member institution can toss that bag in a river like in the good old days of college football.

Needless to say, self-reporting didn’t happen here.

To my knowledge, the NCAA has never reported a potential rules violation by the NCAA. I am guessing this is because it is a practical impossibility for the same committee to sit on both sides of the room during a disciplinary hearing.

In this case, the NCAA received an anonymous letter regarding numerous ethical violations and individual acts of perversion SO profound and disgusting that decorum prohibits me from mentioning them here.

I should know, I wrote the letter. I handed it to my secretary, Dollface. She put a stamp on it and handed it back to me. I opened it, and that’s where I come in.

What I Reported to Me

There’s lots of funny little things that tipped me off and made me investigate the NCAA.

And no, I didn’t ask why the NCAA took four years to investigate a USC program before handing down sanctions for what turns out to be serious but less-than-substantiated violations.

Author’s Note: USC’s football program alone generates over $70 million a year.

And no, I did not want to know why Cam Newton steals a laptop, gets the charges dropped, is caught for academic cheating three times, transfers, has his family solicit a couple hundred thousand to play college football, and walks away with a one day suspension (one practice) and a Heisman trophy while Auburn walks away with a National Championship.

Author’s note: Auburn athletics made over $83 million in revenues in 2008-2009.

And no, I am not interested in how the NCAA cuts a deal pre-Sugar Bowl to defer suspensions to five key Ohio State players until after the Bowl game, an unprecedented delayed action by the NCAA’s enforcement arm.

Author’s Note: Ohio State’s athletic department generated $118 million in 2008-2009. The payoff for each BCS bowl participant alone was $18 million to be split with the representative’s conference.

Finally, I don’t care that the source of the jobs and payment of the salaries for the NCAA administrators and enforcement personnel are derived from the some 1,281 programs, institutions and entities they are supposed to investigate and police.

As Austin Powers once said, “Obvious conflicts of interest are not my bag man.”

No, in this age where people are piling on the NCAA for a dozen or so dubious rulings and weak enforcement actions, I only have one question:

I just wanted someone at the NCAA to tell me why in hell they hired Paul Dee.

Who is Paul Dee?

Paul Dee graduated from the University of Florida in 1970 with his Bachelor of Arts. Later he went on to the University of Miami where he earned his Masters degree in 1973, and his Juris Doctorate in 1977.

Yes, he’s a lawyer, but it gets worse.

In 1993 Dee was named the athletic director for the Miami Hurricanes. Needing a year or two to learn the ins and outs of cheating, under Dee's iron-fisted watch, the University of Miami athletic program was sanctioned by the NCAA in 1995. Eighty students, 57 of whom were football players, falsified their Pell Grant applications, illegally securing more than $220,000 in federal grant money.

Federal officials described the scam as "perhaps the largest centralized fraud ... ever committed in the history of the Pell Grant program.”

Although a good start, stealing from the government didn’t cover the costs of new rims, so while the players were out jacking car radios, the “U” provided over $400,000 worth of other, improper payments to Miami football players.

The NCAA also ruled that the University failed to wholly implement its drug-testing program, and permitted three football student-athletes to compete without being subject to the required disciplinary measures specified in the policy.

The administration’s explanation of course made perfect sense: a campus epidemic of Urinobeakerphobia – the irrational fear of peeing in a cup.

Fast forward to today, when according to recent news reports, from 2002 through the end of Dee's tenure in 2008, booster Nevin Shapiro and convicted felon alleges he provided Miami athletes players with numerous benefits that violated NCAA rules including hundreds of thousands of dollars, gifts, prostitutes, access to yachts and housing, and expensive social events.

Shapiro has been photographed in the locker room, leading the team onto the field, and reading bedtime stories to Devin Hester over a half dozen bottles of  Cristal. When Miami got pounded by Virginia Tech last year, Shapiro actually went to the Miami administration’s luxury sweet and attacked the man responsible.

The compliance officer.

So after overseeing a program publically sanctioned with NCAA penalties and practically harboring a felon on the field, at practice, and in their locker room for over six years, Dee had to find a new gig.

But where are you going to get a job when it’s a matter of public record you are so ethically challenged laws are minor impediments and NCAA rules mean next to nothing?

Of course.

After leaving Miami, Dee became Chairman of the Committee on Infractions at the NCAA, the committee responsible for enforcing NCAA rules and punishing violators.

I am not making this up.

In fact, Dee oversaw the investigation into the University of Southern California's improper relationship with Reggie Bush.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

So What’s the Problem?

Something didn’t add up, and I’m really good with numbers as long as decimals aren’t involved, or complex fractions, but I digress.

I don’t know, hiring the administrator that oversees the dirtiest athletic program possibly in the history of college football to head the NCAA Infractions Committee?

I for one don’t know why the NCAA might have a slight credibility issue.

But then, I recommended they hire Jabba the Hutt to preside over the Hans Solo investigation. Charles Manson is still around, do we need someone to head the Justice Department?

How about asking Snookie to step in and co-chair the Jersey Weight Watcher’s programs or the National Women’s Counsel on Refined Etiquette?

For an institution that is supposed to uphold the highest ethical standards and avoid even the appearance of impropriety, hiring the head of “Thug U” as your lead enforcer seems a bit odd.

I mean, John Dillinger probably would have made a fine bank guard, but you would think someone in HR might have issues.

You don’t have to hit me with a two by four more than three or four times before I notice something’s up. I smelled a rat.

The Investigation

I put on my dark sunglasses, pulled my cap over my eyes, and started asking questions, the kind of questions you don’t ask.

I started asking questions about $300 handshakes, online classes taken by tutors, slimy street agents and strip clubs, forged transcripts, pimped out cars financed by uncles that aren’t related, you know, student athlete stuff.

I started getting a book on what was going on, working my way up, wading through the dark underbelly of college athletics toward the man that worked the system on both ends, The Big Enchilada.

Then a black van pulls up, two guys the size of four guys grab me and throw a bag over my head, and I’m pretty sure the investigation is over.

But it’s just getting interesting.

The Big Dee

I come to in a warehouse, tied to a chair. The big guy at the table in front of me is gobbling down fries like his life depended on it.

He stops, unbuttons the top button of his stylish polyester Sansabelt slacks to reveal a waist that would make a beach ball envious, and says, “You the kid askin’ them questions?”

I nodded, having read about how you can get rid of human bodies without a trace by feeding them to pigs. I admit, my palms started to sweat.

He nodded back. “I’m Paul Dee, whatta you wanna know?”

I stared into the wet beady eyes that held my fate, and held my ground. “I want to know the truth.”

The rotund man shook from head to foot with a laughter without humor. It took a while.

“You can’t handle the truth kid. But if you want the guy behind it all, quit following me, I’m just the delivery boy. You want to know what’s going on, here’s a card. They’re open 8:30 to 4:30 weekdays. Now get out, I’ve got onion rings with my name on them.”

I looked at the card. Agent Wendell Fimpanger, Internal Revenue Service.

The Reason for the Conspiracy

Agent Fimpanger came clean. This one went all the way to the top. Uncle Sam was involved, big time.

Actually, it isn’t so much Uncle Sam did it as much as the tax code did it, which I guess is really the same thing when you think it through.

You see, the NCAA is big business. How big?

The total economic impact in the host cities from the five BCS games in January 2010, was estimated at more than $1.2 billion. Five games.

That’s more money than my hot ex-girlfriend makes on her stripper pole in a week, and she has to work six cities with only 45 minutes for lunch.

So the NCAA is big business with lots of moolah washing in. But with great boatloads of money comes great responsibility - like paying taxes.

As we all know, Uncle Sam likes money too, and Agent Fimpanger is watching.

However, even under the watchful eye of Agent F, the NCAA does not want to pay guzillions in taxes, so long ago they went to their learned tax lawyers and said, “We want to keep all our money and never give any to Uncle Sam, is there any lying or blatant fraud that we could commit so that we can keep all our money?”

Naturally, a really bright lawyer that actually thinks the tax code is cool told the NCAA, “Hey NCAA, if you can fool the IRS into thinking you’re an educational institution you don’t have to give them half your money…,”

He also added, “…and don’t mention that you’re lying, and use the words ‘furthering education’ instead of ‘committing fraud.’”

You see, the NCAA is granted a tax-exempt status as long as their activities and primary goal is “the furtherance of education,” and their participating students aren’t paid for playing sports, that is, remain amateurs.

The problem is that a fair portion of college football players don’t know what a classroom looks like, and often don’t give one damn about education. Neither does the NCAA.

An even bigger portion of the student athletes like gobs and gobs of money, and so does the NCAA. But if the NCAA gives them money, the whole house of cards comes crashing down.

Agent Fimpanger is watching. And waiting.

The Conspiracy

So here we are, one of the biggest revenue producing activities in this country, living an expensive and elaborate lie.

To make believe they are an educational (and therefore tax-exempt) entity the NCAA has to pretend to give a damn about education and are dealing with amateur (i.e. unpaid) athletes --- unless they want to fork over untold millions in tax money.

To avoid a tax bill that would outweigh Snookie, the level of pretense the IRS requires is called the “NCAA Rulebook,” and an enforcement arm big enough to pretend they’re enforcing something.

Yes, the only thing between Uncle Sam and all that crazy-ass dough is the guzillion pages of the NCAA rulebook with two trillion rules requiring academic standards, restricting practice time, prohibiting paid athletes, and making sure no recruiting meal exceeds 55¢.

No rulebook and no enforcement = no exemption.

No exemption = the Gubmint shows up with an endless convoy of wheelbarrows to haul away the NCAA’s cash.

The NCAA can’t let that happen.

The Rock and a Hard Place

And therein lies the quandary.

In many instances, the NCAA football programs have to be fed by a large number of under-educated and unqualified students to put a quality product on the field.  It may come as a shock to many, but 135 lb engineering nerds do not fare well on the interior line at USC.

To make matters worse, scholarships and education aren’t high on the list of priorities for many of the purported student athletes, although bathtubs full of cash and big shiny cars are.

So the NCAA has to bend a few dozen rules to get the boys to meet the academic requirements of its member institutions, and to keep its student workforce happy, it has to let others take care of the bling it isn’t allowed to dole out.

This of course creates a bit of a contradiction with the tax exempt provisions of the tax code.

The NCAA takes care of that problem with an iron fist. They police the system whenever anyone tries to put inferior students in the classroom or pay the players a little sumpin sumpin for their efforts.

Of course, they don’t want to be particularly good at police work.

So, to make it look good, the NCAA has to keep a sufficient number of investigators and enforcement people to satisfy the IRS, but not so many they actually catch anyone --- ineligibility and disqualification are not good for business.

From a public relations standpoint, this is a no win situation. Lax enforcement, compromised academic standards, slow and non-existent investigations, and light penalties are necessary to keep the business model moving while keeping up the façade of a caring concerned educator of amateur athletes.

But this makes an institution that is supposed to be on a crusade to make better student athletes seem weak and hypocritical. Frankly, as an institution purportedly devoted to the continuing education of the student athlete, when it comes to their largest revenue producing sport, the NCAA is an abysmal failure.

But as a straw entity solely designed to give the IRS its minimum requirements and keep up the pretense of a caring concerned educator, it is doing exactly what it is supposed to.

Unfortunately, sometimes a program has athletes walking around in so much bling and driving fast cars some rich rapper gets jealous and calls it in, forcing the NCAA to do something lest Congress or the IRS call bullsh*t and revoke the tax exempt status their small army of lawyers constantly battles to keep in place.

That’s what’s happening at USC, Ohio State, and soon Miami. The cat got out of the bag, and now the NCAA has to try to put it back in with the IRS watching.

They’re much better at staying away from the bag altogether.

And What About Miami?

And Miami?

So maybe Miami did take in Nevin Shapiro and let him drop some serious dime on their athletes and athletic program. If a tenth of what he said is true, there is no question that some of the most flagrant violations in the history of the NCAA Rulebook were committed.

And I guarantee you, if his allegations are remotely true, in a proper show of righteous indignation, the NCAA will pound Miami like an angry mom that just watched a baseball sail into the good china.

But if they do, ask yourself this: How is it possible that violations this blatant and this public went on for eight years without the NCAA doing anything about it?

How is it possible the NCAA’s lead investigator was the AD at Miami for six of those years, but was too busy pounding on USC to mention his own Alma Mater and ex-employer was running a combination cruise line and brothel?

Also ask yourself this: The NCAA did a ten month review of the University of  Michigan’s excess practice time while this kind of crap was going on --- Are you kidding?

What else is the NCAA not doing? You can bet your ass the NCAA is extremely busy not doing a lot.

So What About Paul Dee?

I could take the easy route and say Paul Dee got a job with the NCAA because he’s a good liar, but that would be a leap of faith that is unsubstantiated by any facts known to me.

But after doing my investigation and seeing the real game, I realized I don’t know why the NCAA hired Paul Dee. But at least now I know what they hired him to do.

Nothing.

The head of the Infractions Committee could be Bozo the Clown or Jack the Ripper, although they are both dead so neither would likely be the popular choice.

Point is, anybody with a pulse will do as long as he/she does the bare minimum to catch violators, and hand out stern reprimands when forced to penalize someone, with overly harsh penalties here and there to make examples for the IRS agents in the audience.

And if you understand that the NCAA’s job is really to not catch violators, only to go through a dog and pony show for the IRS when somebody blows the whistle on a member institution, then investigations like the U of M circus make perfect sense, as do penalties like Ohio State’s delayed suspensions.

It makes it look like the NCAA is doing something while keeping the players eligible in the classroom and on the field --- and the money train chugging at full speed.

Paul Dee may be a good old boy that’s was hired because because he was willing to play charades, or just some old administrator trying to do his job. It’s hard to say.

Turns out I don’t know anything about Paul Dee other than he likes fried food in the ambiance of a dark warehouse. In the end I don’t care, because in the scheme of things, he just doesn’t matter.

There are a lot bigger fish to fry.

Agent F, it’s up to you now.