Nevin Shapiro, who orchestrated a $930 million Ponzi scheme and is serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison, told Yahoo! Sports that he gave [University of Miami] Hurricanes players gifts such as money, jewelry and yacht trips, as well as paid for sex parties, bounties on opposing players and even an abortion for a player’s girlfriend.

And it’s all alleged to have happened under the watch of former Miami athletic director Paul Dee, the former chairman of the NCAA committee on infractions …

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“Former Miami athletic director Paul Dee sat in judgment of USC and others while all of this went on under his nose.”

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“The hypocrisy of the NCAA makes me sick,” [one university president] told the Press-Telegram. “To allow institutions like Miami and Nebraska to chair and oversee its infractions committee is like putting foxes in charge of the henhouse.”

Why do people associated with conferences and schools make up the majority of the 10-person infractions committee?

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UD readers have already met the much-loved University of Miami sports benefactor – the “living scholar” after whom the Nevin Shapiro Student Athlete Lounge is named… Was named… Don’t know who it’s named after now… Allen Stanford?

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The sort of thing the University of Miami did during the Nevin Era will, I think, strike anyone as fully in line with the ethos of any serious American university:

Three sources, including two former Miami football players, confirmed that Shapiro offered bounties.

The booster told Yahoo! Sports he had a number of individual payouts for “hit of the game” and “big plays.” He also put bounties on specific players, including Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow and a three-year standing bounty on Seminoles quarterback Chris Rix from 2002 to 2004, offering $5,000 to any player who knocked him out of a game.

“We pounded the (expletive) out of that kid,” Shapiro said of Rix. “Watch the tape of those games. You’ll see so many big hits on him. Guys were all going after that $5,000 in cash. [Jon] Vilma tried to kill him – just crushed him – a couple of times trying to get that $5,000. And he almost got it, too.”

I mean, name any school that doesn’t offer $5,000 extra in scholarship money to an athlete who can kill a competing player.

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Anyway, the writer I quoted up there, the one pointing out that the Miami AD who oversaw the whorehouse during the Nevin years was also NCAA infractions chair… His thing is that the current head of the NCAA is a “detriment to the NCAA” because he’s “not a reformer.”

It’s true that Mark Emmert will do nothing, just as his predecessor did nothing, to rid American universities of the ever-erupting shit-volcano which is big-time football and basketball. But that doesn’t make him a detriment to the NCAA. Uh-uh. Au contraire. How do you think the NCAA chooses its leaders? The point of the NCAA, like any organization, is to sustain itself, not reform itself out of existence. For that, you need a guy as mercenary and cynical as the NCAA itself.

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UD thanks her friend Ralph for linking her to the Yahoo story.