Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

As the college football world turns, some thoughts:

If you’re a college athletic administrator or, even better, the university’s NCAA compliance officer, and a wealthy booster is often seen around your team’s players and acts like Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones on the sideline during games, you’ve got a problem.

Before we locally cast stones at Miami, let's remember: Arkansas wasn’t immune to the booster who was apparently doing too much for the players, though it’s far from the level detailed by Yahoo.com in its expose on booster Nevin Shaprio and the University of Miami football program. Ted Harrod’s alleged extra benefits, even if they were as little as $4,000 spread over 20-something players over a six-year period in the 1990s, garnered the UA a three-year investigation, program embarrassment and a few lost scholarships. It was not helped at all by Harrod’s reluctance to turn over records requested by the NCAA, nor by then-athletic director Frank Broyles' reluctance to share some of the blame, considering he and Harrod were best of buds at the time.

Point is, while the alleged problems surfacing with Miami's program don't happen everywhere, they do happen. It's amazing that when they are reported, the administrators at the offending university who triumphantly enjoyed all the success suddenly look dumbfounded, like "Wh-wh-wh-we didn't know this was going on." (Read: The Ohio State University).

I can think of one SEC powerhouse who has had both the wealthy sideline booster as well as the rich, de facto athletic director/trustee running things for years, and yet nobody thought that could become a problem.

Maybe former Auburn head coach Pat Dye can explain it all when he makes a second appearance in front of the Little Rock Touchdown Club this fall.

Meanwhile, the well-documented Miami story by Yahoo.com's intrepid Charles Robinson and others, which took 11 months to research after the jailed Ponzi schemer Nevin Shapiro began spilling his guts about all his illicit activities within the program, is yet another black eye for the NCAA. At least the NCAA can say it had investigators on the scene before the story broke.

Best Tweet I saw Tuesday night after the Miami news hit went something like this: "Somebody at ESPN is saying right now, our college football guy was writing a book on [Mike] Leach while this was going on."

NCAA president Mark Emmert can't stop the likes of Texas A&M from pursuing another conference allegiance, but maybe he'd like to stand up and say, "Can we halt all this conference realignment talk until we get all the dirt cleaned up around here?" Instead, he's calling for silly summits with university presidents to tackle many of the perceived ills. Included in that bunch: University of Miami president Donna Shalala.

Perfect.

Leavin' Still On Their Minds

Of course, money will be the driving force in the next round of conference expansion/shuffling, but so will ego.