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

by Jeff Benedict

  But success begets power. At Penn State, Joe Pa wielded extraordinary power. For much of his reign Paterno proved a benevolent king: over the years he donated more than $4 million to the university and raised millions for scholarships and charity. A nine-hundred-pound, larger-than-life bronze statue was erected in his honor—a shrine to an “Educator, Coach and Humanitarian,” as the words on the bronze base read. Beaver Stadium was repeatedly enlarged (by more than 60,000 seats to 106,000-plus) to hold the growing masses worshipping at the Church of Blue and White; an economic-medical-industrial complex grew as the school did, bigger and stronger, feeding a sense of power and secrecy around the praiseworthy coach and his team.

  During an eight-month investigation commissioned by the historically weak-kneed Penn State Board of Trustees, a legal team headed by former FBI director Louis Freeh interviewed more than 430 people and reviewed 3.5 million pieces of electronic data and documents. Freeh’s 270-plus-page report singled out the Penn State culture for permitting a “serial sexual predator” to operate at will on campus. Freeh cited what he called “the callous and shocking disregard” for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims by the most senior leaders at Penn State, including Paterno.

  For those inclined to believe top school officials were involved in a cover-up—a charge an independent investigation commissioned by the Paterno family claimed was just not true—the most damning evidence proved to be a critical series of internal e-mails from 1998 through 2001. The e-mails implicated PSU president Graham Spanier, senior vice president Gary Schultz and athletic director Tim Curley in what Freeh called “an active agreement to conceal” Sandusky’s sexual abuse from the authorities, the board and the public.

  Why?

  “The brand of Penn State, including the university, including the reputation of coaches, including the ability to do fund-raising, it’s got huge implications,” said Freeh. “In other words, there are a lot of consequences that go with bad publicity.”

  The Sandusky sex abuse scandal resulted in the severest penalty ever issued by the NCAA: five years’ probation, no postseason bowl games for four years, the loss of at least forty scholarships and a record $60 million fine.

  Reports of college football players in trouble with the law are nothing new. As far back as the late 1980s the Oklahoma Sooners generated national headlines when the FBI busted their star quarterback, Charles Thompson, for selling cocaine to an undercover narcotics agent in Norman. On February 27, 1989, Thompson appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs next to the headline how barry SWITZER’S SOONERS TERRORIZED THEIR CAMPUS. Thompson’s arrest came on the heels of three Sooners being charged with gang-raping a woman in a campus dorm and another player being arrested for shooting a student-athlete in another dorm. At the same time, the team’s best linebacker, Brian Bosworth, said the team regularly used cocaine and fired off guns in the dorm. Thompson ended up pleading guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine and served time. Switzer resigned.

  Since then, one program after another has endured scandals involving lawlessness. But there had not been a comprehensive examination of college football and crime until 2010, when Sports Illustrated and CBS News jointly spent six months performing criminal background checks on all 2,837 players who were on the rosters of SI’s preseason top twenty-five as of September 1, 2010. The checks—performed through state and local courts and law enforcement agencies—revealed that 204 players had criminal records resulting in 277 incidents. Nearly 40 percent of the alleged incidents were serious offenses, including 56 violent crimes (assault and battery, domestic violence, sexual assault and robbery). The report, “Criminal Records in College Football,” also ranked the teams based on the number of players with records. On one end of the spectrum, TCU had no players with a record and Stanford had only one. At the other extreme, Pittsburgh topped the list with twenty-two players (nearly one in four) who had records. Most teams in the top twenty-five at the start of the 2010 season averaged between five and nine players with criminal records.

  But one of the most important aspects of the SI–CBS News investigation was the focus on high school recruits. One logical explanation for the uptick in student-athlete arrests is that more football recruits are arriving on campus these days with prior arrest records. Most states do not permit public access to juvenile arrest records. But Florida does. And an analysis by SI-CBS News of the 318 athletes on the top twenty-five teams in 2010 from Florida found that 22 had been arrested at least once before turning eighteen. If that rate were extrapolated to the entire pool of players in the SI-CBS News study, it would suggest that approximately 8 scholarship athletes per team have arrest records before setting foot on a college campus.

  Without a doubt, some—perhaps most—of these players deserved a second chance. But when juvenile arrests entail crimes of violence—sexual assault, assault and battery, armed robbery—or offenses involving illegal drugs or the use of firearms, there are obvious risks associated with offering these individuals football scholarships. The danger, of course, is a repeat offense on a college campus, which could endanger students and subject a university to adverse publicity, not to mention the possibility of lawsuits. On the other hand, there are situations where football is the only thing between a young man going to college and a young man ending up on the street.

  Another potential trip wire for recruiters these days is the proliferation of street gangs. A 2011 study funded by the Justice Department found that nearly 70 percent of campus police chiefs and athletic directors who responded believed gang members were participating in athletics at their schools or another institution. “This is the first study that systematically looks at gang membership among Division I athletes,” said Scott Decker, director of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State and the co-author of the study. “I think the most surprising thing was how aware police chiefs were of both the crimes that college athletes are involved in, but also the high level of gang membership among individuals recruited to play Division I athletics.”

  Decker and his counterpart Geoffrey Alpert, a criminal justice professor at South Carolina, surveyed 120 BCS conference schools and 10 other universities with Division I basketball programs. “What it said to me is that gang membership in Division I athletics is a significant problem,” Decker said. “It is an issue we need to pay attention to because these young men and women bring a set of relationships with them, bring a set of past practices with them, that if left unattended could pose real problems and liabilities for universities.”

  Perhaps no region of the United States better illustrates the dangerous nexus of street gangs and college football recruiting than the “South L.A. strip,” a stretch of gang-ravaged cities south of downtown Los Angeles that runs from Inglewood at the northern tip to Long Beach at the bottom. Compton, the birthplace of the Bloods and the Crips, is right in the center. The city of ninety-six thousand was called the murder capital of the United States in the 1990s. These days Compton is home to thirty-four active street gangs—often several on the same block—and more than a thousand gang members. It is also a hotbed for college football recruiting.

  Keith Donerson has been coaching football at Compton’s Dominguez High for more than twenty-five years. Heading into the 2011 high school football season, he had five seniors on his roster who were being heavily recruited by BCS programs. All of them lived in neighborhoods plagued by gang violence.

  “We try to let the kids know you have to pick a side,” Donerson said. “You’re either going to play football, or you’re going to be a gangster.”

  Donerson, whose shaved head and steely gaze give him the appearance of a marine sergeant, spends about 60 percent of his time mentoring and 40 percent teaching Xs and Os. “Football decisions are minor,” Donerson said. “But a decision to go to a party is not minor. Not for these kids.”

  One of the best high school football players in greater Los Angeles was murdered in Compton on M
ay 24, 2009. Dannie Farber, an all-city wide receiver, was eating with his girlfriend at a fast-food restaurant when a member of the Tragniew Park Compton Crips gunned him down. Farber had no gang ties and didn’t know the shooter.

  “A lot of kids in this neighborhood are gifted athletes,” said Sergeant Brandon Dean, a supervisor in the L.A. County sheriff’s office assigned to the gang unit in Compton. “Unfortunately, some get involved in a gang and commit crimes. Others get involved in the sense that they are mistaken as gang members and ultimately get shot and killed as a result.”

  That’s what law enforcement officials believed happened to Farber. His senseless death shocked the city. USC’s head coach at the time, Pete Carroll, spoke at his funeral. Stevie Wonder sang.

  Every high school football player at Dominguez knows the Dannie Farber story. He played for rival Narbonne High. In an attempt to minimize his players’ exposure to gang violence, Keith Donerson uses football as a substitute for family. “A lot of kids around here are raised by grandparents,” he said. “The father is in jail or dead. The mother is preoccupied. So the kid is on the street.”

  Gangs typically fill the void left by broken homes. But at Dominguez, football offers an alternative. “We try to create a family-type atmosphere,” Donerson said. “We do a lot of things together. We lift weights, we run, we condition, and we go to camps. We spend a lot of time together.”

  At the start of the 2011 season, Donerson sat down with four of his best players—offensive tackle Lacy Westbrook, linebacker Lavell Sanders and cornerbacks Brandon Beaver and Alphonso Marsh—to discuss the unique pressures of living in Compton. None of them had ever belonged to a gang, but all of them had witnessed gang violence.

  “We all have friends who gangbang,” said Sanders, the leader of the group. “Football is a big outlet. It separates you. You easily could make the wrong decision and be in the streets. But thank God for our fathers that they kept us going in the right path.”

  All four players limited their time to school and football. They almost never went out. “Basically, from Thursday to Saturday night I don’t go anywhere unless it’s to a USC game or church,” said Sanders. “The rest of the time I’m either at practice or working out or staying inside.”

  “I’m afraid of going out,” added Brandon Beaver. “I was at a party and shots were fired. People were running everywhere. I don’t go out anymore.”

  Donerson’s players didn’t have tattoos either. Beaver explained, “All of my friends have tattoos all over their neck and face,” he said. “They are in jail. They smoke. It’s easy to be like everyone else. Being different is hard.”

  Three of the four players—Beaver, Westbrook and Sanders—came from two-parent homes. Cornerback Alphonso Marsh was the exception. He was fatherless. “Coach Donerson is a father figure,” said Marsh. “If it wasn’t for Coach, I wouldn’t have stayed with football. And if not for football, I’d be on the street, gangbangin’, or I’d be in jail. I owe a lot to him.”

  The comment got Donerson choked up. “Basically, it boils down to family,” Donerson said, placing his hands on his players’ shoulders as they sat side by side in the weight room. “I teach these boys that a man provides for his family. He’s a friend. He stands up when he’s wrong. A real man takes responsibility for himself.”

  All four players would eventually end up with college football scholarships in 2012. But the story of Alphonso Marsh’s recruiting process was an odyssey that reveals just how much is at stake when a prestigious institution of higher learning decides to offer a football scholarship to a boy from a faraway, dangerous place.

  Curley Rachal was born and raised in Compton. Her parents—part Indian and part Haitian—were from Louisiana and spoke Creole. They named her Curley after the black curly hair she had at birth.

  Wiry thin with a soft, meek voice, Curley had four children of her own. Alphonso was the baby in the bunch. His father abandoned him when Alphonso was five. He kept his father’s last name—Marsh—but his mother became the apple of his eye. “Him and me are like paper and glue,” Rachal said. “We are always with each other.”

  From the time Marsh was little, Rachal hoped and prayed her baby would make it out of Compton alive and have the opportunity to get a college degree. But paying for college was something she couldn’t fathom. Rachal has been disabled for years. She raised her Alphonso on a fixed income. By the time he was twelve, she had started thinking her dream could come true when Marsh began displaying unusual athletic abilities. By then she had amended her dream to hoping he’d grow up to be a pro athlete.

  But the pull of street gangs threatened to put all those dreams at risk. Then, one day, Rachal met Keith Donerson. First he talked Marsh into playing high school football. Then he started driving him home after practices and picking him up on game days. It was like having the father that Alphonso never had.

  In the summer between Alphonso’s junior and senior years of high school, Donerson drove him to a Nike 7-on-7 camp in Las Vegas. He also paid the expenses. “Camps help kids get recruited,” Donerson said. “And I like my kids to get an offer right away, preferably from a Pac-12 school. So I pitch in a little bit.”

  After the 7-on-7 event Marsh’s ranking on the scouting Web sites shot up, and offers started flowing in. Within days after the camp ended, Donerson got calls from Arizona, Washington, Boise State and New Mexico about Marsh. One of those schools called Marsh directly on his cell phone, offering him a scholarship. A couple schools sent coaches to Dominguez to communicate their interest in Marsh directly to Donerson.

  By the start of his senior season in September 2011, Marsh was ready to commit. Donerson discouraged him.

  “A four-year commitment is like a marriage,” Donerson said. “It might look good. It might smell good. But it might not be good. It’s better to figure that out before getting the phone call in the middle of his freshman year because he didn’t get used to that type of environment.”

  One day midway through the fall of 2011, Utah’s defensive coach Chad Kauha’aha’a (pronounced cow-ha-a-ha-a) showed up at Dominguez. Coach Chad, as his players and fellow coaches referred to him, had seen film on Marsh. His primary interest, however, was Marsh’s best friend and fellow cornerback, Brandon Beaver. But when Coach Chad encountered Marsh in Donerson’s office, he was surprised at his size—six feet two inches and 183 pounds, with an unusually long wingspan.

  “That’s when Utah really came in on Alphonso,” Donerson said. “Sometimes you like a kid on film, and then you actually see him and you are like, ‘Oh, he’s a lot bigger than I thought he was.’ ”

  Before long, Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham made a home visit and met Curley Rachal. The crowded living room of her one-story home showed signs of a cousin, niece and nephew who lived there with Alphonso and his mother—pacifiers on the end table, a makeshift coatrack lined with children’s clothes in the corner, a boom box and a circular fan to circulate the hot air. “He grew up in some very humble circumstances,” Whittingham said. “It was a credit to him that he was in a position to further his education. We place a lot of pride on character with the kids we bring into our program. Alphonso is a good kid. We thought he was a good fit for us.”

  Rachal felt honored to have Whittingham in her home. But she was a little overwhelmed. “I didn’t know too much about the process,” Rachal said.

  As was often the case, Rachal’s biggest concern boiled down to finances. “I’m on a set income, and I don’t have the money for his college,” Rachal said. “I was worried about how the scholarship would work and when it would start.”

  Whittingham and his staff put all of her fears to rest. Alphonso’s scholarship, they explained, would kick in when Marsh enrolled in school. It would cover all of his expenses—tuition, books and food. He’d even have medical insurance. She had nothing to worry about. Everything would be taken care of.

  A relationship of trust was formed. Rachal was at ease, which put her son at ease. He agreed to make
an official visit to Salt Lake City.

  On Friday morning, January 13, 2012, a black Lincoln Town Car pulled up in front of Alphonso Marsh’s home. It immediately drew attention; limos weren’t the norm in Marsh’s neighborhood. Kids on bicycles stopped to stare. Men walking past the liquor store next door whispered and pointed.

  Marsh had been waiting on his front step with his bag. After a kiss for luck from his mother, he said good-bye and headed past the onlookers to the curb. Air travel scared him. He had never flown prior to the recruiting process. This marked just his second flight.

  A burly limo driver wearing a cap and a black suit over a white shirt took his bag and put it in the trunk. Then he opened the rear door. Marsh waved good-bye to his mother one last time before ducking into the backseat. As the car drove away, he slipped on his headphones, pulled up his iTunes and selected the rapper Curren$y for the ride to Long Beach Airport.

  His teammate Brandon Beaver met him at the gate. Despite already narrowing his choices down to Nebraska and Washington, Beaver had accepted Utah’s invitation for an official visit. A couple hours later he and Marsh touched down in Utah. There was snow on the ground. Neither of them had ever seen snow before.

  Coach Chad picked them up. After taking them out for breakfast, he brought them to campus, where they met up with eight other recruits and toured the football facilities. They tried on jerseys in the locker room, checked out the Under Armour gear and met with different coaches. The feeling of camaraderie had a big impression on Marsh. At one point the coaches took all the recruits tubing in Park City.