Friday column: College corruption has a new face

So.

Nevin Shapiro, in prison for a 20-year stretch for devising a $930 million Ponzi scheme, tells Yahoo! Sports he provided “impermissible benefits” to 72 of the university’s football players and other “student-athletes” between 2002 and 2010.

Impermissible benefits? How would you define those, Nevin?

Well, according to The Associated Press’ account, Shapiro told Yahoo that he gave players “money, cars, yacht trips, jewelry, televisions and other gifts … Shapiro also claimed he paid for nightclub outings, sex parties, restaurant meals and in one case, an abortion for a woman impregnated by a player.”

Cash, sex parties, an abortion. Yes, I guess those qualify as impermissible. Talk about your full-service booster. Shapiro puts all previous D-I sugar daddies to shame.

Shapiro, all 5-foot-5 of him, apparently liked basking in the reflected glory of strapping 19-year-old athletes while they, feigning friendship, liked basking in the bling and the babes. But when Shapiro was sent to the big house, Hurricanes past and present suddenly developed memory issues.

Nevin who?

This rather specific form of amnesia led to the well-researched and well-documented Yahoo story, with Shapiro starring as The Informer.

Hell hath no fury like a jock sniffer scorned.

“I can tell you what I think is going to happen,” Shapiro told Miami television station WFOR from federal prison in Atlanta. “Death penalty.”

“Death penalty” is slang for the NCAA banning a school from competing in a sport for at least a year. The death penalty has been given only five times in the history of college sports; programs do not recover from it easily or quickly.

And Shapiro might be right.

The NCAA on Wednesday said it has been probing Shapiro’s reputed malefactions for five months and that, if true, the allegations demonstrate the need for “serious and fundamental change” in college sports.

You think?

The Yahoo story is worth going to not only for the blow-by-blow account of Miami’s utter corruption but for the photos than help illustrate it.

There’s Shapiro in a 2003 shot, one arm around Hurricane star tight end Kellen Winslow Jr., the other holding a large bottle of … well, it doesn’t look like lemonade, in Shapiro’s VIP section of Opium Garden nightclub.

There’s Shapiro on his yacht playing best friends forever with linebacker Jonathan Vilma and lineman William Joseph.

There’s Shapiro leaning into the frame of a 2008 photo with then-basketball head coach Frank Haith, one of seven Miami coaches Shapiro says were well acquainted with his illicit activities.

But the best photo of all is a snap taken during a 2008 basketball fundraiser.

Shapiro, fairly glowing with self-esteem, is speaking into a hand-held mic. On his right, a smiling Haith rests his hand on Shapiro’s shoulder. On Shapiro’s left is university President Donna Shalala, looking like a kid at Christmas who’s just been given a shiny, red bicycle.

She’s gleefully staring at a $50,000 check from Shapiro as though it can’t be real.
Guess what, Donna? In a way — since it reportedly came from Ponzi scheme funds — it wasn’t.

But the NCAA investigation, Donna, and the possibility of the death penalty — along with the likelihood of your suddenly developing a pressing need to spend more time with your family — are very real, indeed.

College corruption has a new face, one that will be hard to top.

Go, Canes.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.