Kick Out the Sports!
by Bob Cook
Bob Cook's weekly ruminations on sports appear Mondays in Flak.
Winners never cheat, cheaters never win. Whoever says that certainly doesn't follow college football. It's been a source of scandal almost since the day it began in 1869. The National Collegiate Athletics Association was founded in 1906 because President Theodore Roosevelt threatened to ban college football for having a startling number of player deaths. The NCAA instituted a "sanity code" after World War II mostly because of academic, financial and gambling improprieties in football.
Suspicion that the then-powerful University of Nevada program threw a game in 1948 is the reason you couldn't bet on a Nevada collegiate team between 1960 and 2001. William and Mary, of all schools, set the standard for the modern corrupt sports program. It attempted to go big time after World War II, resulting in academic scandals that claimed the jobs of the football and basketball coaches, the school dean, several professors, the head of the alumni association and the school president.
Alas, none of this has stopped cheating in college football. That's because cheating works. In fact, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution a few years ago reported that the Southeastern Conference, tops in revenue, had 28 championship teams sanctioned by the NCAA within four years of their titles.
With so much scurrilous activity, it's time to put it in perspective — to determine which programs are the biggest cheaters ever. Inspired by football's convoluted Bowl Championship Series, which uses a series of polls and computer programs to determine the biggest postseason matchups, we'll roll out the Big Cheater Series, which doesn't have all the polls but attempts to be at least somewhat inscrutable in why it comes up with its matchups.
The best explanation is that preference goes to programs that have cheated over a long period of time, or cheated in a particularly historic way. More recent cheating gives you a stronger case, the inverse of how a loss late in the season kills your Bowl Championship Series chances more than an early-season loss does, except when Oklahoma gets trounced by Kansas State in the Big XII championship.
Every bowl has a corporate sponsor, no matter how clunky the name — the all-time classic was the Poulan Weed-Eater Independence Bowl. So we figured for our dubious postseason, the bowls deserved the appropriate evil corporate sponsor.
Before we name the participants in the four BCS bowls, it should be said that many deserving teams didn't make it. Colorado, despite having a founder of the Promise Keepers Christian men's movement establish a tradition of
scandal, criminality, hostility to academics and moral turpitude. Oregon, for pumping huge money into its program and selling out as a division of Nike
(who's responsible for those hideous uniforms), while the state is in financial crisis. North Texas, for allowing Necessary Roughness to be filmed in its football stadium.
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Alas, while there are many deserving schools, there are only eight spots. Keep cheating, everyone, and maybe you can join the elite:
THE YOUR MUTUAL FUND HERE ORANGE BOWL
Florida State vs. Southern Methodist University
The BCS, given that it was created by the NCAA's largest conferences, usually shuts out those who aren't members of those conferences. But a particularly strong team can get in, and in Flak's BCS, low-wattage SMU qualifies. SMU, in its high-wattage days, was the first and only school to get the NCAA's death penalty — actually being banned from playing football — as punishment for academic and financial scandals in the 1980s that went all the way to the Texas governor's office. (Bill Clements, not George W. Bush). The crazy thing is, SMU, despite the utter devastation the penalty laid upon its program — or maybe because of it — is still at it. SMU wins over Florida State, which seems generally sleazy, but seems to always be one step short of getting caught.
THE WORLDCOM ROSE BOWL
Washington vs. Ohio State
Note to athletic directors: nothing good can come from hiring Rick Neuheisel. He left a trial of slime behind in Colorado, and now he's helping to bring down the whole athletic department in Washington, even though he was fired before this season for illegally participating in an NCAA basketball pool. (If that happened everywhere, the nation would have a 90 percent unemployment rate.) Ohio State gets in for the whole Maurice Clarett mess, although it also gets a boost from its long-term employment of Woody Hayes, who ended his career by punching a linebacker who'd intercepted one of his quarterback's passes. Washington gets the nod for now, although Ohio State could make a comeback. In the case of Clarett, Ohio State may well learn, like Big Ten colleague Minnesota, that hell hath no fury like a teacher scorned.
THE FREDDIE MAC FIESTA BOWL
Oklahoma vs. Miami (Fla.)
In 1974, Oklahoma won a national title while it was on probation. That was under the days of coach Barry Switzer, who ran the rootinest-tooninest, Wild West-saloon kind of a program ever run. Miami ran hard in the 1980s and 1990s, too. A bad sign for your program is when one of your biggest boosters is Luke from 2 Live Crew. Miami wins this one. Both programs seems clean now, but Miami at least is bringing back its bad-sport reputation for carping after losses.
THE ENRON SUGAR BOWL (BCS title game)
Alabama vs. Auburn
It takes a special kind of cheater to stand out in the Southeastern Conference, but these in-state rivals are up to the task. Both schools combine good-ol'-boyism with a moral relativity that is the envy of Dick Cheney.
The only reason Alabama, which is on probation more frequently than Robert Downey Jr., isn't getting the death penalty is because fellow NCAA members saw what it did to SMU. So Alabama is merrily rolling along, enmeshed in the Albert Means scandal. Essentially the case of a lineman whom Memphis basically put on the auction block, the case has tied up numerous colleges and a bunch of high school coaches in Means' hometown of Memphis. Already, one of Alabama's most powerful boosters has been indicted in the case.
In 2002, 'Bama dodged the death penalty for the second time in three years. Maybe its excuse was that Judge Roy Moore had not put up an easily available version of the Ten Commandments to review.
Maybe Auburn's excuse is the same.
Auburn is behind SMU in receiving the most NCAA violations ever. Former coach Terry Bowden told the Auburn hometown paper in September that there was a long-standing, booster-fed cash payment system in place when he arrived on campus in the 1990s. The Auburn president, athletic director and two trustees further burnished Auburn's image by sneaking out of town to meet with Louisville coach Bobby Peterino, presumably to convince him to take over for Tommy Tuberville, who is still on the job.
Of course, Alabama hasn't distinguished itself in the coaching department recently. Does the name Mike Price ring a bell? Then, after Price, when Alabama had the chance to erase some of the blot of its racist past (see George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door) by hiring former assistant Sylvester Croom as the first black coach in SEC history, Alabama
fell back to good ol' boy-ism and hired the less qualified, and white, Mike Shula. (Mississippi State just hired Croom.)
Congratulations, Alabama. You're the winner of the Big Cheater Series!
E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.
