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**Chase in Arizona** · 04-29-2024, 02:37 PM

Part One: The USC, Reggie Bush Case

On June 10, 2010, the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions (COI) hit the USC football program with the stiffest sanctions regime it had imposed since the infamous SMU case of the early ‘80s. USC would lose two postseason appearances, get docked 10 scholarships per year for three years, and be limited to 15 new scholarship players per year for three seasons. The COI also ordered USC to disassociate itself from the Heisman-winning player at the center of the scandal, imposed severe restrictions on access to football practices and sidelines during games, and vacated the entire 12-win 2005 season – which included legendary games against Notre Dame and Texas.

But the biggest kick in the gut came when the COI vacated USC victories from the end of the 2004 season (including its blowout victory over Oklahoma in the BCS Title Game), and on top of that deemed every junior and senior currently on USC’s roster a “free agent” – permitting them to transfer to any other school in the country without penalty. The signal could not be more clear: the NCAA was out to destroy USC… or at least the COI was.

Indeed, it was the Committed headed by University of Miami Athletic Director Paul Dee which had wrapped a “lack of institutional control” finding around USC’s neck. “Lack of institutional control” (or “LOIC,” as it’s now popularly referred to in the blogosphere) was the basis for the precedent-setting penalties levied against USC.

The linchpin of the case against USC was of course Reggie Bush, and the money and benefits he and his family had accepted from two wannabe sports agents, Lloyd Lake and Michael Michaels (yes, that is really the name he uses). While the COI brought other violations under the LOIC rubric (for example, Pete Carroll had used a non-staff “consultant” to breakdown game tape during the offseason), these violations – even cumulatively – would not warrant heavy punishment under NCAA established precedent. For example, Michigan self-imposed a penalty of “reduced offseason workouts” for the same type of consulting violation, which the NCAA ultimately ratified.

The case against USC was about the benefits to Reggie Bush, and why nobody at USC put a stop to them. In that regard, it’s important to review just exactly what Reggie Bush and USC were guilty of. Reggie Bush, his stepfather, and his mother unquestionably accepted tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars in benefits from Lake and Michaels in clear violation of NCAA rules. Reggie’s parents lived in a new house rent-free for nearly a year, probably received free transportation to at least two USC road games, and may have taken cash on top of that. Reggie, for his part, bought a used 1996 Chevy Impala in 2005 (presumably from funds supplied by Lake and Michaels), stayed a night at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas on Michael’s credit card, and may have accepted money for improvements to the car. (The widely distributed photograph of Reggie standing next to a “supped-up” version of his Impala was not taken until August 2006, months after Bush had signed a multi-million-dollar contract with the New Orleans Saints.

Beyond that, however, the case is more complicated than it may seem. For example, the benefits package given to Reggie’s stepfather was part of a prospective business arrangement between Michaels & Lake, on the one hand, and Reggie’s stepfather, LaMar Griffin, on the other, to form a “sports marketing” agency, which presumably would feature Reggie as the center attraction. Michaels & Lake were not USC alumni, boosters nor even fans. Michael Michaels (real name Michael Pettiford) was apparently some “mover and shaker” type with a connection to the Sycuan Indian Tribe in San Diego County. Lloyd Lake was a recently paroled ex-con who attended Helix High School, also in San Diego. Helix was not only the high school which produced Reggie Bush, but apparently was the employer of Reggie’s stepfather, LaMar Griffin. It was the Helix High/San Diego connection (not USC) which served as the basis of the relationship between Lake, Michaels, Griffin and, ultimately, Reggie.

**Chase in Arizona** · 04-29-2024, 02:38 PM

Part Two: Which Institution Really Lacked Institutional Control?

There has never been any credible evidence that any employee, alumnus or booster of USC was in any way involved with these illicit benefits. Nor did the COI predicate its penalty on direct involvement by USC. And, perhaps most importantly, the Reggie Bush scandal had nothing to do with recruiting. (Indeed, the payments to Bush didn’t really give USC a competitive balance at all, but perhaps that’s best left for a different article.) Instead, Dee’s Committee determined that USC “should have known,” and by not knowing it failed to maintain the requisite level of “institutional control.”

Just how exactly USC “should have known” about all this strikes at the heart of Paul Dee’s conflict of interest and the trouble the NCAA will have in enforcing Dee-decreed precedent going forward. The case against USC, and indeed the entire LOIC findings, appears to be predicated on three factual determinations: first, former running backs coach Todd McNair knew Bush was receiving improper benefits, and that knowledge is imputed to the entire University; second, USC staff and compliance officers should have recognized that Bush was on the take by virtue of the Impala he began driving to school in the winter of 2005; and finally, that USC woefully understaffed its compliance department. Unfortunately for Paul Dee, the case against him for conflict of interest is substantially enhanced by exploring these determinations.

First, the case against running backs coach Todd McNair is extraordinarily weak. Indeed, McNair is now suing the NCAA for millions of dollars in damages because the COI singled out McNair for specific punishment (above that handed to USC). There is virtually no evidence of “knowledge” on the part of McNair. The COI rested its findings on four telephone calls between the cell phones of McNair and Lloyd Lake, and really nothing else. The first three calls were failed connections in a one-minute time frame on an October night in 2005 when Reggie Bush was hosting Percy Harvin on a recruiting trip to USC. All evidence indicates that McNair was attempting to reach Bush regarding Harvin’s visit on an alternative number Bush had given to McNair – a cell number belonging to Lake (who was out with Bush on that night). The only other documented contact between McNair and Lake was a January 2006 call lasting approximately 2½ minutes initiated by Lake, which took place after Bush’s final game in a USC uniform. McNair testified that he did not recall this conversation (nor any communications at all, for that matter, with Lake). It’s possible that Lake merely reached McNair’s voicemail and left a long message. It’s also possible the two discussed Reggie’s illicit benefits in detail for 2½ minutes. Or, something else entirely could have happened. But, that is all really beside the point, as the call occurred after Reggie’s final game at USC.

Also tending to exculpate McNair is the fact that in this era of electronic communications, there is not one email, one text message, one saved voicemail evidencing McNair’s knowledge of wrongdoing (or even any knowledge of Lake at all). Lloyd Lake himself took great pains in saving documents (and illegally recorded phone conversations) which would tend to implicate Bush and his stepfather; yet, he had nothing on McNair. And, indeed, when he was deposed by NCAA compliance investigators, Lake admitted that he had no direct information that McNair knew what was going on… that is, until the compliance investigators suborned Lake’s perjury convincing him to reverse his story and make a sweeping accusation that McNair “knew” or “had to know” without any factual basis.

As to Reggie’s “new” used 1996 Chevy Impala, it’s not entirely clear how this vehicle somehow forms the basis for a LOIC finding. As previously discussed, the car was apparently “tricked out” after Reggie signed with the Saints. Moreover, in a city like Los Angeles, and on a campus like USC, a Chevy Impala – regardless of how new or old or “tricked out” it is – hardly stands out. To the extend Paul Dee would demand that USC officials conduct an depth investigation into how funds were obtained to procure such a vehicle, that requirement appears completely absurd in retrospect, given the far more flagrant and conspicuous shenanigans happing at Miami right under Dee’s nose.

Finally, the business about USC’s “understaffed” compliance department is, at best, a red herring. The very model of NCAA compliance departments has long been recognized as Ohio State, which maintains a large staff and is quick to notify the NCAA of even minor violations. Of course, that didn’t interfere at all with wide spread rule breaking by Ohio State players. Dee’s complaint that USC understaffed compliance is really just a way of saying USC didn’t do enough busy work to satisfy him.

**Chase in Arizona** · 04-29-2024, 02:39 PM

Part Three: How Exactly Did Dee’s Committee Determine Punishments?

The specter of Dee’s bias was apparent from the moment the COI decision was made public. While the COI was staffed with several other professionals, and the NCAA’s compliance investigators had on their own clearly participated in prosecutorial improprieties (not only by coercing Lake to change testimony, but listening in on illegally-recorded taped phone calls made by Lake), it was Paul Dee who instantly became the poster boy of NCAA discipline. Immediately after sanctions were announced, Dee held a press conference where he told the media that USC’s punishments were based – not on NCAA precedent – but on the sanctions the NCAA had imposed on Dee’s Miami program back in the ‘90s resulting from the biggest Pell Grand scandal in United States history – a scandal which involved Miami coaches and staff illegally funneling Pell Grant funds to Miami football players. For that, the NCAA imposed a loss of 31 scholarships and a two-year bowl ban. Dee appealed, and the NCAA reduced the penalty to 24 scholarships and a one-year post-season ban. During his June 10, 2010 press conference, Dee unmistakably explained that Miami’s Pell Grant sanctions were used as the benchmark for the sanction his Committee was imposing on USC (never mind that Miami’s infractions actually involved University employees fraudulently directing taxpayer cash to football players). Indeed, Dee even pontificated on how USC could recover going forward by using Miami as an example: “You have to be extremely careful in your recruiting. Only bring in the right people that are going to be able to help you, was our point of view back at Miami.”

It was also during this press conference that Dee made what had previously been the most famous line of the Bush ordeal: “This case strikes at the heart of the principles of amateurism.” Only now, against the backdrop of eight years of Nevin Shapiro running rampant under Dee’s nose, has his other notable quote from that press conference risen to such prominence:
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“High profile players demand high profile compliance.”

Taking this standard at face value, one wonders exactly what Dee would now find as the proper punishment for his Miami program – a Dee program which apparently failed to administer compliance over some of the most high profile football players in recent memory: Frank Gore, Devin Hester, Andre Johnson, Willis McGahee, Antrel Rolle, Sam Shields, Sean Taylor, Jonathan Vilma, Vince Wilfork, Kellem Winslow, Jr., D.J. Williams – i.e., the starting lineup for the Pro Bowl.

Of course, the punishment handed down to USC – for benefits to one player with no involvement from University employees, alumni or boosters – hugely complicates any punishment for Miami. If Paul Dee’s 30-scholarship, two-year-bowl-ban, every-junior-and-senior-is-a-free-agent standard is applied, what does Miami get? As I Tweeted on Tuesday, using the “high profile players demand high profile compliance” standard, Miami has about 78 Reggie Bushes on its hands.

The simple answer, of course, is that the NCAA won’t punish Miami in accordance with this standard; it’s wholly impractical, if not impossible.

Of course, Dee must have known the absurdity of the standard he had established. He had to have known that under this standard punishment for the more serious “university-sponsored” wrongdoing (i.e., involving coaches, staff, boosters, recruiting, etc.) would not be at all feasible. Scandals involving multiple players and university staff or boosters would warrant program-crippling sanctions if not outright termination.

In the most fundamental way, the sanctions handed to USC by Paul Dee were arbitrary and were capricious. Far from based on an objective standard of conduct and discipline, Dee used his own personal history of punishment. The NCAA then only exacerbated Dee’s shenanigans by purporting to remove the boundaries of precedent from its disciplinary decisions. This of course was a huge mistake and for a host of reasons.

**Chase in Arizona** · 04-29-2024, 02:40 PM

Part Five: USC Was Part of a Pattern for Dee, Not the Exception

As Doug Krikorian of the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported on Thursday, the Long Beach State men’s basketball team also had a disturbing run-in with Paul Dee. In August 2007 Paul Dee summoned the president, athletic director and vice-president of student affairs for Long Beach State to Indianapolis following on the university’s self-reporting of irregularities concerning summer schools courses taken by players on the men’s basketball team. The 13½ hours of grilling meted out by Paul Dee on that day was among the most condescending the three senior administrators had received in their lifetimes.

Krikorian reports that Dee told the Long Beach State senior administrators, “You have to put in place the kind of institutional control we have at Miami.” That bears repeating. Dee told the president, athletic director and vice-president of student affairs for Long Beach State that they needed to implement the kind of institutional control Paul Dee had at Miami!

Two more footnotes to the story are telling. First, one of the other members of the NCAA Infractions Committee in that hearing was on faculty at the University of Nebraska – presumably law professor Josephine Potuto, who is reported to have made repeated factual errors in accusing coaches and administrators during USC’s hearing before Dee’s COI in February 2010. On the same day the three Long Beach State administrator appeared before Dee and Potuto, six University of Nebraska athletes were arrested for illegally selling sporting apparel.

But perhaps more disturbing is Krikorian’s account of a separate incident involving Long Beach St. President F. King Alexander and Paul Dee’s University of Miami. In 2005 Alexander was president at Murray State University. That year he fired Murray State’s football coach, Joe Pannunzio, because of what Alexander described as “numerous” “quite bad” “incidents.” Pannunzio was immediately hired by Miami’s football program. Pannunzio was one of the coaches prominently mentioned by Nevin Shapiro in the current scandal.

Part Six: A Conflicted Disciplinary Panel Cannot Render Valid Decisions

Notwithstanding its sweeping attempts to insulate itself from outside scrutiny, the NCAA cannot simply do whatever it wants. By joining the NCAA as member institutions, schools like USC and Long Beach State did not sell themselves into bondage. Among the many obligations and duties governing the relationship between the NCAA and its members, like USC and Long Beach State, is the overriding duty of the NCAA to act in “good faith.” Just exactly what that means can be a thorny issue, but generally speaking the starting point for “good faith” conduct by an association like the NCAA is to abide by its governing documents, first and foremost its By-Laws.

Because even the appearance of prejudice or bias may taint the decisions of panels charged with enforcing association rules, internal bylaws will typically forbid membership on a panel if there even a hint of prejudice. Of course, the NCAA By-Laws are no exception. By-Law 32.1.3 expressly addresses potential conflicts of interest for members of the Infractions Committee. It says that no one may serve on the COI if either that individual “is directly connected with an institution under investigation” or if he/she “has a personal, professional or institutional affiliation that reasonably would result in the appearance of prejudice.”

How does Paul Dee measure up?

By virtually any standard, Dee fails in comic fashion. Dee may plead ignorance of Shapiro’s improper benefits (as he now, in fact, has), but is that credible? Consider what we know from Charles Robinson’s reporting. Shapiro was a highly esteemed member of the Miami booster community: the University named a lounge after Shapiro in the athletic offices; Shapiro was twice allowed to lead the football team out of the tunnel on game day; Shapiro was honored by Paul Dee himself at halftime of a Miami football game; and Shapiro posed with University President (and former Clinton Administration honcho) Donna Shalala in a ceremony where Shapiro presented Shalala with a check for $50,000 (presumably illegal proceeds from his Ponzi scheme). Beyond that, Dee’s hand-picked head football coach Randy Shannon repeatedly warned his players and assistant coaches to stay away from Shapiro. And, in a disturbing incident, Shapiro screamed obscenities at and attempted to start physical altercation with the head of Miami’s compliance department – yes, the head of the very compliance department which Dee had derisively bragged about to the Long Beach State senior administrators.

And, in spite of all that, Shapiro was given unfettered access to Miami football players (as well as, apparently, to recruits). The 60+ pictures posted by Charles Robinson in his Yahoo! exposé reflect only a fraction of the hundreds of pictures Shapiro has with various Miami football players in various compromising stages.

Putting aside whether Dee’s claims of ignorance pass the smell test, Dee is guilty as sin when applying anything close to the standard Dee applied to former USC running back’s coach Todd McNair and, by extension, to the entire university itself. If you remember, Dee imputed knowledge of Bush receiving “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to the entire University of Southern California by virtue of three unanswered phone calls and one 2½ minute call between McNair’s phone and Lake’s phone. Imputing the same level of knowledge to Paul Dee in the Shapiro case is simply devastating.

Of course the Shapiro situation reveals only the most blatant example of Dee bias. Keep in mind that Dee volunteered to the media that the punishment issued to USC was largely based on the punishment his Miami program had received in the ‘90s for the entirely dissimilar Pell Grant scandal, not on any factually similar precedent.

And yet, the NCAA’s failure to act in “good faith” didn’t end with Dee. As discussed earlier, Dee’s fellow COI member Josephine Potuto is widely reported to have substantively misunderstood the evidentiary record against USC, and showed no interest in rectifying her ignorance. In addition to utilizing illegally recorded telephone conversations and coercing the lead “witness” to change his testimony regarding Todd McNair’s knowledge of the Bush payments, the NCAA compliance investigators who built the case against USC also denied representatives of USC and of Todd McNair the opportunity to “confront the accuser” (Lloyd Lake) by way of cross-examination – a fundamental aspect of American jurisprudence, which, for criminal cases, was even codified in the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And finally, of course, the NCAA not only purported to remove the burden from itself of having to conform its punishments to earlier precedent without establishing any guidelines going forward, but also limited the scope of its own internal “appeals” process in such a way so as to make overturning a decision of Dee’s Infractions Committee virtually impossible. None of this meets traditional standards of due or fair process – or “good faith.”

Indeed, that the NCAA calls its internal review process an “appeal” is not only misleading but a farce. Devoid of any legally recognized standards or procedures, the NCAA’s internal review process (what it calls an “appeal”) carries no more weight than the machinations by which Hertz decides that it isn’t going to waive that $75 charge for returning your rental car late on a Sunday, or, perhaps more apropos, the process a capo in the Genovese family uses to decide whether its going to lift a contract on someone’s head.

**Chase in Arizona** · 04-29-2024, 02:41 PM

Part Seven: What to do Now?

As the Heisman Pundit has pointed out, the NCAA in the past has been able to get away with issuing harsh punishments while avoiding public scrutiny by effectively turning college fan bases against one another. Because significant punishments were so rarely issued, when they did come, the pleas of traumatized fan bases typically fell on deaf ears. Who exactly in the SEC was feeling sorry for Alabama? Meanwhile, sports writers and on-air personalities used NCAA penalties as soapbox moments – occasionally calling for fundamental change in NCAA rules, and sympathizing with innocent players on sanctioned teams, but never really second-guessing the legitimacy of the practices of the NCAA punishment process.

Ironically, it is the recent trend of the NCAA “finally” “cracking down” on “cheating” which has called into question the legitimacy of the NCAA investigation and punishment procedures. Instead of the rare sanction, the NCAA has spent the last 18 months conducting the most conspicuous investigations and handing down the most significant punishments since the 1980s. Clearly, the NCAA didn’t anticipate the blowback.

Nor did it recognize how thoroughly compromised the head of its Infractions Committee Paul Dee was – though it will be interesting to find out just how the NCAA went about vetting Paul Dee for Chairmanship of the Infractions Committee in the first place. Was Eliot Spitzer not available?

In any event, thanks to Charles Robinson and Nevin Shapiro, the NCAA’s disciplinary process has been revealed as a sham, and its chief cop a fraud. The USC situation itself presents a sort of triple-whammy problem for the NCAA. Not only was Dee inherently compromised (if technically “conflicted” under NCAA By-laws), his punishments diverted from all established precedent of severity and, indeed, were based (as Dee conceded) on the punishment his own program had received 15 years earlier. This is simply not the way an organization can conduct itself if it wants to maintain any semblance of credibility.

It is the severity of the punishment to USC which creates the biggest problem. Using the USC punishment as a benchmark, it will be impossible to punish Miami without shutting its football program down for several years. Of course, such a draconian measure makes absolutely zero sense. The NCAA simply cannot continue forward using the USC sanctions as precedent.

But if the USC sanctions are not a precedent, what are they? Clearly, it would seem, an aberration – an artificial concoction of a thoroughly compromised rogue.

There are two major steps going forward the NCAA can take to begin to repair its tattered reputation from the legacy of this corrupt rogue, while also establishing an unbiased mechanism to enforce adherence to NCAA rules – one which the public will recognize as legitimate.

First, the NCAA must vacate all remaining punishments from Dee’s Infractions Committee – rendering them a nullity. This will be an unmistakable signal to the public that the NCAA recognizes the seriousness of its problem and intends to correct it. Since Dee has now transitioned off the COI, there will be only a handful of institutions affected by the vacatur of Dee’s punishments. For these schools, the NCAA should be able to reach a prompt accommodation as to an appropriate penalty.

Second, to address future infractions, the NCAA should outsource the adjudicating panel to private, third-party arbitration. Private arbitration has proven an effect method of resolving disputes involving large institutions. Given its dismal track record, permitting the NCAA to maintain its judicial panel within the NCAA structure will inspire no confidence in the public or among its members.

Under private arbitration, the NCAA can maintain its prosecutorial wing – the compliance investigators – within the structure of the NCAA, providing a clear distinction between the “prosecutors” (who work for the NCAA) and the “judge and jury” (which operate entirely outside of the NCAA).

In anticipation of such a transition, the NCAA should establish clear guidelines for both fair process to the targets of NCAA investigations (i.e., permitting the accused to confront the accuser) as well as punishments which will be uniformly applied for various infractions.

Under such a bifurcated process with transparent, uniform guidelines, the opportunities for corruption are far less and the likelihood of another Paul Dee arriving on the scene would be far more remote.
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(The blogger BeachCardinal contributed to this article.)

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Reggie Bush / Paul Dee / The NCAA -- A Blast from the Past

Reggie Bush / Paul Dee / The NCAA -- A Blast from the Past

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