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Here's former University of Miami president Paul Dee in 2010 (emphasis added):
To satisfy the requirements of NCAA membership, an institution also must actively and fully investigate and monitor its athletics program and engage in thorough and complete follow-through when information surfaces. Universities may not hide their heads in the sand and purport to treat all programs and student-athletes similarly when it comes to the level of scrutiny required. The more potential there is for big payoffs to student-athletes once they turn professional, then the more potential for illicit agent and third party involvement in the provision of significant cash and other benefits. In turn, heightened scrutiny is required. NCAA members, including USC, invest substantial resources to compete in athletics competition at the highest levels, particularly in football and men's basketball. They must commit comparable resources to detect violations and monitor conduct with a realistic understanding and appraisal of what that effort entails, and what it will cost. In this regard, and particularly during the time of the football violations, the institution fell far short.
That's from the introduction of the 67-page report issued last year by the NCAA Committee on Infractions, of which Dee was then chairman, outlining infractions and significant sanctions against USC for its negligence in preventing star running back Reggie Bush from accepting improper benefits from "illicit agents and third party involvement" outside the program. "These were reactions to what the committee saw as a very serious case," Dee explained elsewhere. "[The extra benefits] enhanced recruiting which led to their ability to recruit other athletes. ? We have to protect those institutions [that follow the rules]."
Here's Dee today, talking to the Palm Beach Post about alleged improper benefits in his own backyard (again, emphasis added):
CORAL GABLES ? Convicted Ponzi schemer Nevin Shapiro was known around the University of Miami's athletic department as a "very interested fan," but the former booster gave no indication that he was showering players with gifts and services, former UM athletic director Paul Dee said Tuesday.
Shapiro's allegations that he provided former and current players with illicit benefits has prompted an NCAA investigation into UM's football program.
"We didn't have any suspicion that he was doing anything like this," said Dee, UM's athletic director from 1993 to 2008. "He didn't do anything to cause concern."
The charges against USC concerned one football player (Bush) accepting cash and prizes from a pair of unknown "agents" with no other clients and only a tenuous connection to USC, at best. The emerging allegations against Miami involve a wealthy booster who was "known around the athletic department," whose lifestyle later earned him the nickname "Miami's Caligula," who co-owned a sports agency that signed two Hurricanes (Vince Wilfork and Jon Beason) who went on to become first-round picks and who described himself as the "owner" of a de facto professional sports franchise. Who had access to the press box, once flew on the team plane to a road game and twice led the team onto the field, and whose money bought a player's lounge named in his honor, until his name was removed following an arrest that would eventually put him behind bars for 20 years for running an alleged $930 million Ponzi scheme.
Which of these scenarios better describes an institution hiding its head in the sand?
I suspect Dee is wise to the apparent hypocrisy; he even noted it himself after the Bush ruling last summer, recalling that he had been in charge when Miami was slapped with heavy scholarship losses and a bowl ban in 1995, in the same scandal that prompted Sports Illustrated to run a cover story suggesting the university should drop football. I also know NCAA rules and precedents are always vague enough to allow the Committee on Infractions to basically come to whatever it conclusion it wants in any given case. But the standard he helped set in the USC ruling raised the bar higher than it had ever been set before ? beyond "What did you know?" to "What should you have known?" ?�and if Shapiro's accusations about his generosity toward Miami football players contain even the slightest kernel of truth, Dee's committee should leave the committee no choice but to bring that bar down on the Hurricanes with the same kind of force.
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Matt Hinton is on Facebook and Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.
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