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NCAA punishes USC - Reggie Bush, OJ Mayo, Dwayne Jarrett, Joe McKnight investigation

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USC. Let's get back on topic.
 
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The statute of limitations is long gone for this stuff. A USC player talks about getting improper benefits back in the 1980s.

And since he talks about his older brother, perhaps USC can be stripped of the 1980 Rose Bowl win, giving Earle Bruce a National Championship. :tongue2:

Fox

Cash flows freely in college sports

Lonnie White went from Asbury Park, N.J. to USC in 1982. While there, he set a single-season record for kickoff return yardage in 1986 that stood until 2010. White played under John Robinson and Ted Tollner. He earned his degree and went on to a career as a writer at the Los Angeles Times. White also wrote a book on the UCLA-USC rivalry. For the first time, he reveals he received money while playing at USC:

Imagine an empty lot with a young college football player sitting alone in a parked car late at night. After a few quiet minutes, a luxury sedan arrives and headlights flash.
That's the sign for the athlete to move. He starts an uneasy conversation with the driver, but that chat does not last long before the two exchange bags and part.

Once back in his own car, the player smiles when he looks into a small brown bag filled with money. It?s $5,000 cash, and it could not have come at a better time.

Sounds like a bad movie. It isn?t. It was life for me when I played college football at the University of Southern California in the 1980s. If I were caught, my actions would have had an impact on thousands connected with the program.

To this day, it?s something I?m ashamed about. Rent was overdue, and my household bills were delinquent. I needed the money to live. So accepting the $14,000 in different forms of ?benefits? over my college years three decades ago was an act of survival.
...
When I enrolled at USC as a freshman in the fall of 1982, my main upperclassman role model was my brother.

As a crafty fifth-year senior, Tim was a true connection to tradition at USC. He played on two Rose Bowl-winning teams and was a member of a national championship squad.

But Tim also knew about the other side of college football.

By the time Tim began to be recruited in the late 1970s, USC?s football program already had a negative reputation for ?pushing the envelope? when it came to following rules. As a result, two of the five seasons that my brother played for the Trojans, they were blocked from appearing on television and in bowl games because of NCAA or Pac-10 penalties.

It didn?t take long before I noticed that my brother seemed to have a great relationship with a wealthy USC football supporter. Whenever Tim had a financial problem, his answer man usually responded.

Unlike other upperclassmen, who often assume roles as deal brokers within a program (keeping first-year players from meeting their benefit sources), my brother loved taking me along to meet our ?money man.?

We would use the meeting as a joyous occasion, but for most of my freshman year, I didn?t exactly know how the process worked. This was before cell phones, and my brother kept me in the dark when it came to details. I just remember taking a variety of items, from signed footballs to player-issued season tickets, to our benefits source in exchange for money, usually cash.

Even though I knew what I was doing was wrong, it seemed like everyone I knew who played college football enjoyed some type of extra benefits as a player.

My money source was season tickets. Every scholarship player was given four home game tickets and the option to purchase an additional four.

These tickets often sold for more than face value and that?s how I ended up alone in the parking lot waiting for a brown bag drop off.

By then, I was a senior who had learned this side of college football from my brother and his classmates.

It must be noted that all this went on without the coaches? knowledge. That seems hard to believe. It is true, though. At major programs, the pressure to win and the time commitment the coaches put forth toward the program itself leaves major opportunities for players to interact with people who have a different agenda.

With today?s media in love with scandals, people would have a field day with some of the ?unknown? things that happened within college football programs decades ago.

Everything from $100 handshakes (when players are slipped cash during meet-and-greet events) to sponsored party trips (often featuring women, sex, drugs and alcohol), would be exposed.

Even my recruiting stories would have been interesting. For example, the amount of tickets and free transportation offered by Rutgers would certainly have had a couple of days life as an Internet story, and the private plane Notre Dame sent to fly me to South Bend would at least be blog material.

(After I declined to commit to those schools, their attitudes changed ? immediately. Instead of driving me to my home after my trip to a Rutgers game, I was dropped blocks away and my father had to pick me up. And, Notre Dame left me snowed in at an airport when it came time for me to return to New Jersey.)
...
It?s the ?dirty secret? of college football that will continue to grow as money and power is connected with the sport.

Cont'd ...
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BB73;1943741; said:
The statute of limitations is long gone for this stuff. A USC player talks about getting improper benefirs back in the 1980s.

And since he talks about his older brother, perhaps USC can be stripped of the 1980 Rose Bowl win, giving Earle Bruce a National Championship. :tongue2:

Fox
Click to expand...

This isn't a real surprise to be honest. I think every college football fan, deep down in their hearts, knows something is going on like this. Money exchanging hands for some reason, whether it be memorabilia, season tickets, or paid to show up at some event happens.

The true reality is that we all cover our eyes, and pray it isn't happening at our school. I mean, over the last 10 years here, I have seen the success and just been praying that's it's all legit. Over the decades I have watched college football I have seen it, super successful team had some serious skeletons in the closet, and I was hoping ours was bare.

I will be the first to say, I thought USC getting nailed was funny to me, not because of the school, but because of where I lived, in Southern California where I heard about how great that program was, and after MoC when they beat the crap out of me for how corrupt our program was, and when nothing came of it, I still got beaten up. So yeah, I watched this unfold with a type of glee that I can't quite describe in text.

Maybe Karma is a bitch, but after all this, the loss of a NC, the loss of a Heisman, and the end of their legendary football coach, I don't really know how I feel. The joy I thought from seeing them suffer may be shaded by what's going on here, but it feels like the NCAA is at a point where they want to punish the schools but without taking anything out of their pockets.

Does anyone think that all of this took away from people watching USC's season last year? They had the same ratings, and will it next year? No, it won't be the fans of them but the fans who hate them now, and still, the NCAA makes it's money.

I don't know how I feel about it all, but I know, in my heart, that kids get benefits, it may be a free meal, it may be a bag of money, or it may be other things, but I chose to blind myself to all of it.
 
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NCAA_SANCTIONS_FOR_USC.jpg



SPORTS FLASH: There is major activity afoot in big time college football. Conferences are furiously switching member schools like shirts, in frantic efforts to maximize television revenue. Multi-million dollar contracts are at stake, and at many schools sports revenue plays a crucial role in funding academic programs. Meanwhile, the NCAA continues to pretend this is all about ?scholar athletes,? even as top schools are penalized for virtually paying 350 pound ?kids? to play ball. USC is the latest to be sanctioned, and what is interesting is that the case symbolizes how some good schools cheat the most, and some mediocre academic ones make an effort to really teach their players something of value.


Entire article: http://www.continentaldivide.us/art...y-teach-their-players-something-of-value.html

I don't know if this was posted before; however, it (entire article) makes for interesting reading.
 
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Saw Bush was being interviewed on Sportscenter last night, but I didn't watch it. Anyone else see it? I'm sure it was mindless dribble about "being young" and "making mistakes." You know, the stock answer for guys who get busted doing something in college.
 
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WolverineMike;1952406; said:
Saw Bush was being interviewed on Sportscenter last night, but I didn't watch it. Anyone else see it? I'm sure it was mindless dribble about "being young" and "making mistakes." You know, the stock answer for guys who get busted doing something in college.
Click to expand...

I believe the correct phrase is mindless drivel.

Mindless dribble is more like this:

Darius-Morris.jpg
 
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