Here’s a little suggestion to every major-college athletics director.
At your home football opener, lock down the suites and VIP parking areas.
Hand out copies of the latest embarrassment of college sports and humanity, courtesy of Miami and Yahoo! Sports. Hand out a version with a different name and your school in place of Miami.
Show a video. Threaten lie-detector tests. Give the suite-users and VIPs a DVD of ESPN’s “30 for 30” on how SMU earned the death penalty.
Then, of course, do the same with the athletes, team by team.
It doesn’t have to be long or detailed, no recitation of any pages from the NCAA bible. Just a simple message: “Don’t be a lying, dishonest, greedy, cheating, arrogant scuzzbag, or you’ll look like a lying, dishonest, greedy, cheating, arrogant scuzzbag and get us all in trouble.”
Actually, every athletics director should employ such backside-covering tactics, because there are no parameters on greed, lying, absurdity and arrogance.
Nevertheless, the scandalous hurricane that has hit Miami has added to a depressing period in college sports, teaming with the greedfest involving Texas and ESPN that may lead to upheaval in college sports -- thanks to Texas A&M just looking to run away from its conference and Texas -- and, of course, Tattoogate in Columbus, Ohio.
With this mess in Miami, we have quite the screenplay: money, hookers, yachts, strip clubs, more hookers, bigger money, bodyguards and a Ponzi scheme to fund it all.
All we need for it really to be an armpit is throw in a Kardashian having a Jersey Shore wedding, broadcast live on TMZ.
Meet Nevin Shapiro, the diminutive booster who pathetically measures self worth on the success of teenagers and how much they like him and his money. In the process of displaying greed, arrogance and insecurity, he has scarred the program he loved, putting it closer to the death penalty than any other program since SMU got it back in 1985.
Shapiro and those he corrupted at Miami are the target of great consternation right now, but the bigger problem is, as in most cases, starts at home with the parents.
Everything remotely positive and of substance that schools and coaches -- no matter how inferior they may deemed to be -- try to get across during the day is often eliminated within the first 10 minutes of a kid walking through the door of the home, whether it’s a 7 p.m. or midnight.
It’s quite a gumbo, this mixture of parents who shouldn’t be parents setting nonexistent examples regarding education, work ethic and honesty for kids plus a dash of arrogance and entitlement because of athletic ability, and it can get nasty.
Of course, the rest of us share blame.
We have scores of fan bases who don’t care about rules and would rather cheat and win and get a bad rep but win. Those filling the stadiums aren’t necessarily demanding integrity, and they’re currently looking at Miami -- as are athletics directors and presidents -- with a basic “there but for the grace of God go we” philosophy.
We have 11- and 12-year-olds on national TV playing baseball and looking every bit like mini-pros with their batting gloves, adjustments and habits, mugging for cameras. At least there are no Facebook pictures of them with a bong.
We have high school kids, sophomores and juniors, thrown into national spotlights, and suddenly, high school football battles college football for national TV time. The offseason manipulation of the AAU and summer camps opens the door for high school kids to be potentially shady in college.
With the hookers -- the kids and parents with their hands out -- come the pimps -- those willing, if not anxious, to cheat -- and every school has its own Nevin Shapiro, although certainly not on the same level. Make no mistake, there isn’t an athletics director around who doesn’t begin sweating when he hears the word “booster” in an ESPN story.
Sadly and not surprisingly, there is a huge faction that finds nothing wrong with what Shapiro and the players at Miami did, a reason Miami has been a destination and is in trouble again. The “I got mine, ain’t nothin’ wrong with that” talk again sparks a variety of ills, like preferring violence to education, theft to work, making excuses to doing right.
All of the amateur psychology and hand-wringing aside, this story is as depressing as it gets for a game that brings us so much joy every fall. Nobody wants to look at their favorite college players and wonder.
Contact Michael A. Lough at 744-4626 or mlough@macon.com
