The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football

by Jeff Benedict

  By 2009, Jimmy Smith had gotten serious about the Bootleggers. Asked how he funded the team’s travel during that period, Smith mentioned an LSU fan site he owned and work he was doing for a University of Miami Web site. (No record of Smith owning an LSU site could be found; he was listed as recruiting operations director for a Miami-affiliated site called Southeast Insider.)

  “I’m kind of a one-man show,” he said. “Putting it together city by city.”

  His motivation, he said, was to help the kids. The Bootleggers were also “self-funded,” Smith said, by parents chipping in for gas and hotels. Smith admitted that from time to time recruiters asked for special access to his players or pressed for “unofficial” visits to their schools. In return, they had offered some incentives—“small stuff, expenses for travel”—or the opportunity to work a coaching camp. Smith said he turned them all down.

  “If you take money or something like that,” he said, “it’s almost like word spreads who will play the game and who won’t.”

  Smith said it took about twelve hours to drive from New Orleans to the IMG National Championships in Bradenton. He had fourteen kids in the van, about two-thirds already with Division I scholarship offers, several from LSU. Still, Smith said, at least six schools had asked him to drop by during the trip.

  “It just means they want to give the kids an unofficial visit on campus,” Smith said. “We will meet with coaches, give them a tour. Kind of like they went from their high school.”

  NCAA rules allow for “unofficial” visits to college campuses as long as the “non-scholastic” coach received no compensation from the school. NCAA investigators and other sources said illegal unofficial visits—springing out of the 7-on-7 scene—had morphed into a huge problem. More and more schools were paying or otherwise rewarding “coaches,” street agents, outside “third parties,” even writers and owners of scouting services, to ferry kids to campus for a closer look. The scenario was the same as in summer league basketball: identify the top kids, find out who had the best access to those kids, then make your play.

  As for Jimmy D. Smith, on September 27, 2012, the NOLA Media Group, which operated the Times-Picayune in New Orleans and its attendant NOLA.com Web site, announced that “James Smith” had been hired as a full-time employee as part of a new initiative to bolster prep and college coverage across the state. Given potential journalistic conflict-of-interest issues, Smith was asked if he planned to continue to coach the Bootleggers or be associated with other 7-on-7 teams. He said he no longer would.

  Just a few weeks after that conversation, on the weekend of April 13, 2013, the Bootleggers came south to compete in a top 7-on-7 event in Tallahassee, Florida, where they reached the semifinals before falling to the eventual champions. One of the players on the Bootleggers was the sophomore Jacques Patrick, at six feet two inches and 210 pounds one of the most coveted high school running backs in the country. Patrick had more than forty offers from elite schools, such as Alabama, Florida, FSU and Ohio State, already on the table. According to his Twitter feed, he had been driven to Tallahassee from his home in Orlando to play on Sunday. He didn’t say who was driving, but a source with knowledge of the situation pointed to a writer from the University of Miami–centric recruiting Web site, CaneInsider, with ties to New Level Athletics.

  To make things even more interesting, the offensive coordinator on the Bootlegger team, according to several eyewitnesses at the event, was none other than—you got it—Jimmy D. Smith. And, oh, as Patrick made clear on his Twitter account, he would be dropping in at Florida State on Sunday for a “short” unofficial visit.

  To complete the circle, on Tuesday night, April 16, Smith posted a story about the Tallahassee tournament on his NOLA.com recruiting blog. Three of the first four paragraphs in the story highlighted the Bootleggers, praising their performance. Smith went on to cite individual standouts. Third on his list was Jacques Patrick, who Smith said had dominated at wide receiver. “Has a chance to be the top prospect in the Sunshine State for the 2015 recruiting cycle,” he wrote. “There’s a lot of good things to say about the rising star.”

  Rising star. Rising stakes. The sweet smell of cash. The cesspool deepens and darkens.

  The System evolves.

  If Mark Emmert was looking for a sledgehammer to pound home his “cheaters will not profit” message—and he most certainly was—he found it in the form of former University of Miami booster and convicted Ponzi schemer Nevin Shapiro.

  In February 2011, Shapiro contacted the NCAA enforcement staff with a story straight out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless. The gist of it was this: Between 2002 and 2010 he had personally provided millions of dollars in “extra benefits” to at least seventy-two former Hurricane football and basketball players. At least $170,000 in cash. Hookups with prostitutes. Endless champagne-soaked nights partying on his multimillion-dollar yacht or in South Beach clubs. All with the knowledge or direct participation, said Shapiro, of at least seven Miami coaches. In other words, about a decade’s worth of rock star partying with a big-bucks booster as the host. It made the SMU cars and cash scandal seem quaint by comparison.

  Five months earlier, in September 2010, Shapiro had pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud and one count of money laundering for his role in constructing a $930 million Ponzi scheme. Investors who believed they were buying into a grocery-distribution business were left holding an empty bag. (In June 2011, Shapiro was sentenced to twenty years in prison for securities fraud and money laundering.)

  A team of NCAA investigators went to work, interviewing Shapiro and digging through boxes of documents. Ameen Najjar, a director of enforcement, supervised the investigation. Najjar had joined the enforcement staff in 2004 after a career as a police officer and later as legal counsel to the Indianapolis Police Department.

  As the investigation pressed forward, certain “third parties” identified by Shapiro as aiding and abetting the corruption at Miami either refused to cooperate or suffered an acute case of amnesia when confronted by the NCAA. Shapiro’s former bodyguard was one. Six months in, a potential game-changing case was beginning to stall out.

  Emmert was not happy. And he was even less so when, in August, the Yahoo! Sports investigative reporter Charles Robinson delivered another blockbuster, publicly pulling the curtain back on a decade’s worth of Miami vice, based on hundreds of hours of jailhouse interviews with Shapiro.

  The pressure on Najjar to produce increased. In late September 2011, Shapiro’s bankruptcy attorney, Maria Elena Perez, had an idea how to jump-start the investigation. She suggested using the bankruptcy proceedings in Shapiro’s case as a means to leverage sworn testimony from at least half a dozen key—uncooperative—third-party witnesses. Unlike the NCAA, Shapiro’s attorneys had subpoena power in the bankruptcy case—they could compel the witnesses to come in and give depositions. Why not use that power to question people about the alleged NCAA violations?

  Najjar, the former Indy police officer, e-mailed the idea to Julie Roe Lach, the NCAA’s vice president of enforcement, and Tom Hosty, managing director of enforcement. According to an external review later conducted by a prominent New York–based law firm, Hosty found the idea “most intriguing … this could be a creative solution for bigger break-throughs on evidence.”

  Lach forwarded Najjar’s e-mail to Jim Isch, the chief operating officer of the NCAA, requesting approval for funding. Isch told her to proceed. He later explained he was only authorizing an expenditure of money and not—as the second-highest-ranking officer in the association—sanctioning a backdoor approach. The plan was passed to the NCAA’s in-house legal staff for review.

  What came back was not what Najjar wanted to hear: Forget it. Under no circumstances, he was told, could the staff hire Perez to take depositions on the association’s behalf. In an e-mail to Najjar, a deputy general counsel for the NCAA wrote, “Any information obtained through such a manner for use in the NCAA process would be subject to significant s
crutiny.” Moreover, it would likely circumvent the legal limits of the NCAA’s authority to compel people to testify. The legal counsel shared her opinion with both Lach and Hosty.

  So what did Najjar do? According to the independent review, four days later, at 4:34 p.m. on October 25, 2011, he sent Perez this text: “I ran into a problem with our legal dept concerning retaining you but there is a way around it. I will call you tomorrow morning.”

  Think about that text for a second and the message it sent. A high-ranking enforcement officer charged with upholding NCAA bylaws was proposing “a way around” the very bedrock principles of honesty and fair play he was hired to uphold.

  For Najjar, the “way around” meant not to formally “retain” Perez but only to reimburse her for legal expenses. Perez took it to mean the NCAA could not officially “retain” her but would pay her “costs and fees,” including billable hours for depositions. Either way, the die was cast.

  The external review later found Najjar never checked back with the legal staff to approve his way around the roadblock or informed Lach. Instead, he marched forward with Perez, telling Perez that “everything was approved.”

  It would be August 2012—nearly two years into the investigation—before the NCAA discovered what Najjar had done. And not from Najjar, who was reportedly fired three months earlier. Rather from an invoice submitted by Perez for $57,115 for billable hours between October 2011 and July 2012. By then, depositions of two alleged eyewitnesses to Shapiro’s largesse, a former Miami equipment manager and Shapiro’s ex-partner, had taken place. Uh-oh.

  In mid-January 2013, the NCAA notified Miami that Najjar had gone rogue; a week later Emmert offered an unprecedented mea culpa to the media.

  “This is obviously a shocking affair,” he said in a conference call with reporters. “It’s stunning that this has transpired.”

  So stunning that a month earlier the well-respected Lach had been fired by Emmert, even though the external review found she “never knowingly took any steps that were inconsistent with legal advice” and took “many steps” to ensure the proper legal procedures were taken. In her defense, the review cited her “daunting workload.”

  In a statement issued to Outside the Lines in April 2013, Lach took responsibility for what was nothing less than an unconscionable breach in ethics: “One misstep should not unravel the good work that’s already been done, and more importantly, remains to be done by a committed and ethical enforcement staff.”

  In March 2013, Miami took the unprecedented step of seeking to have its entire case before the Committee on Infractions thrown out prior to a hearing in June. Columnists called Emmert’s leadership into question. And called for his head.

  “I’m very concerned about it,” he said of the public’s confidence in his organization.

  Inside NCAA headquarters, the enforcement staff was reeling. Morale was bottoming out fast—full of tension and distrust. The firing of Lach had touched off a fresh wave of anxiety, leaving at least one staff member in tears. Then Dave Didion walked out the door. Didion had been a respected, integral part of enforcement for more than twenty years. Now he was resigning for “personal” reasons to take a job as associate athletic director in charge of compliance at Auburn. Soon after, Chance Miller and Rachel Newman Baker left the NCAA for jobs elsewhere.

  Adding to the confusion and frustration was a brewing disconnect between Emmert and the enforcement staff, sources said. Here he was, still pushing his reform agenda in public, while inside investigators were being told it was best to “lie low” for a while in hopes that the erosion of trust at the heart of the Miami case would heal over. Meanwhile, the 7-on-7 world was only getting bigger and a national football playoff was looming. If cheaters wanted to prosper, they could not have picked a more opportune time.

  No two ways about it—the monumental screwup in the Miami case had come at the worst possible time for the big-game hunters at the NCAA.

  Ohio State and the consequences of $3.07

  The black-and-white photograph is of a young African-American basketball player sitting on a bench. His head is down with a towel over it. You have to look close to see the caption. It reads: “Images are sometimes deceiving. This isn’t a picture about defeat, it is about dedication and being tired.”

  Larry James had put the picture in a prime spot—eye level, as you exit his office—because he wanted to remember its subtle message, one he delivered in speeches to civic groups and scholarship winners all over town. What they call you is one thing, but what you answer to is so much more important.

  In May 2012, James was sixty-one years old and, from the look of things, a young and highly successful sixty-one. He was a partner in a prestigious downtown Columbus law firm, a trustee of the Kenyon College board, a community leader and a country mile from his dirt-poor southern roots. The oldest of seven children from five fathers, James was raised on welfare by his single mom. His sport was basketball. By the time the family moved north to Elyria, Ohio, young Larry had got himself some game. But Ohio in the early 1960s, not long after Brown v. Board of Education, wasn’t all that different from Alabama in the 1950s. But as he liked to say: It’s not where you start in life, it’s where you finish.

  So, head down, he kept dribbling. Kept working. The first in his family to graduate from college, he later earned a law degree from Cleveland-Marshall in 1977. Thirty-five years later he was general counsel to the national Fraternal Order of Police and to USA Track & Field’s board of directors. Earlier that May, James and his wife, Donna, had been honored as Humanitarians of the Year by the Greater Columbus chapter of the American Red Cross.

  Three weeks after that award luncheon James was thumbing through files in the first-floor conference room of his firm’s elegant South Front Street office. Dark wood walls were filled with arresting African-American art. Photographs depicting “colored only” take-out joints and white-only pools gave a sense of history to the halls. For his part, James was immaculately dressed in a blue-and-pink-striped shirt and matching tie accented with stylish horn-rimmed glasses. A visitor was on hand to talk about his role as lead counsel for Ohio State University and the sixteen football players he ended up representing on appeal to the NCAA. His assistant slipped in with an important file. “Oh, yes, yep, yep, I think we got it,” James said. The legal juices had begun to flow. It had been a long, hard fight against a system at work.

  “You start out with the lack of due process, a lack of notice of what it is you’re accused of doing,” he said. “A lack of adequate preparation. A lack of any rules to govern the process or procedure. So it just lends itself to abuse.”

  James, of course, was talking about what critics argue is the NCAA’s often heartless, capricious enforcement process. James’s specialty was administrative appeals, civil rights, labor/employment contracts and business and professional ethics, so he was up for a fight. Truth be told, he saw something of his own struggles in the Ohio State athletes.

  James had originally been hired to represent the five OSU football players—Terrelle Pryor, Mike Adams, Daniel “Boom” Herron, DeVier Posey and Solomon Thomas—caught up in “tattoo-gate.” Eventually there would be eleven more players. Some were part of allegations involving overpayments by longtime booster Robert “Bobby D.” DiGeronimo from his Cleveland-based companies. Others had been caught up in the aftermath of a scathing SI cover story.

  James quickly found himself “spinning plates,” frantically trying to meet his clients, gain their trust, gather information and make sense of the far-flung charges—memorabilia sales, free tattoos, the questionable use and sale of automobiles, extra benefits, cash payments, even a questionable round of golf.

  He quickly cleared nine players suspected of selling their Big Ten championship and Rose Bowl rings, game pants, helmets, jerseys and Fiesta Bowl watches to tattoo parlor owner and suspected drug dealer Eddie Rife and others. The players still had their gear. Pictures were taken and placed into an annotated binder and delivered
to OSU and the NCAA. Done deal.

  At the same time the NCAA was poking into wide receiver Posey’s bank records, wondering where some deposits had come from. “They [the NCAA] were saying you’re selling something, you’re selling photographs, jerseys,” said James. So he and other lawyers in his firm put together a spreadsheet detailing the source of the deposits. They obtained an affidavit outlining the family’s relationship with a friend who had provided some of the money, Jeffrey Xavier, explaining his relationship. Then James dug even deeper to prove Posey’s innocence.

  “I created a family tree,” said James. “Went down each deposit, where it came from. They didn’t find anything beyond the tattoos. I put to bed the memorabilia. The car situation goes to bed. I stop that investigation. The golf? Posey played nine holes. Put to bed. I take care of the money. That’s put to bed. I put everything to bed.”

  Everything, that is, except the allegations involving DiGeronimo’s overpayment of a total of $1,605 to four players for manual labor at his construction company and car wash between 2009 and 2011. The first player interviews took place in the spring and summer of 2011. They turned out to be textbook NCAA. Its interviews. Its rules.

  “If you’ve got a day’s notice, you’ve found heaven,” said James. “Lawyers can’t do anything. We can’t talk. We can’t ask questions. We can’t speak. So all you can do is try and dress rehearse these kids and try to prepare them for the process.”