Major new NCAA D1 scandal

The ultimate question.   Will the NCAA strip the coaches of having a certain number of players who don't have to meet the eligibility requirements to get in college.  Will they take those away to stop coaches from having a say and this being an issue?

I say no because then you would not have football and basketball teams at many of the elite schools if every player had to meet the true eligibility requirements.

I remember one school telling one of my sons "I have an exemption to get you in the school.  I'm just not sure I can keep you in school with your grades." 

PitchingFan posted:

 

I remember one school telling one of my sons "I have an exemption to get you in the school.  I'm just not sure I can keep you in school with your grades." 

This is a great observation that very few people seem to have much interest in. 

old_school posted:

PitchingFan posted:

 

I remember one school telling one of my sons "I have an exemption to get you in the school.  I'm just not sure I can keep you in school with your grades." 

This is a great observation that very few people seem to have much interest in. 

But on the other hand, I remember one coach telling my son, getting in is the hard part. Once you get here, we'll help make sure you stay here.

The thing that I don't get about this is -- how do the prosecutors see the hierarchy of the conspirators?  RJM's take, though cynical, is probably right -- the parents won't do the time.  But should they?  It's not a perfect analogy but it seems to me this is kind of like a prostitution ring.  The coaches are the prostitutes. Yes, they know they are committing a crime and deserve to be punished for it, but they are also being used.  The parents are the johns - they didn't come up with this scheme; they were enticed into it by a shady guy.  The guy who ran the scheme is the human trafficker and needs to have the book thrown at him. So I don't get why they prosecutors apparently cut a deal with him to rope the others in.  I hope it's not a very good deal, because this is a very, very bad guy.   Maybe some of our lawyers here have a take...

I heard a coach from a local D3  put another way in a recent recruiting seminar q&a session discussing grades. To paraphrase; If he had two ballplayers that were similar, one had a 3.1, and one had a 3.6, He would take the one that had the 3.6 because he has figured out how to mange his extra-curricular activities and still get the school work done. The 3.1 has not figured out how to manage his time and would require extra work on the coaching staffs part to keep the player in school and eligible. Being a college athlete is a grind and HS GPA is an indicator of work ethic and correlates to academic success at the next level.

JCG posted 

But on the other hand, I remember one coach telling my son, getting in is the hard part. Once you get here, we'll help make sure you stay here.

The thing that I don't get about this is -- how do the prosecutors see the hierarchy of the conspirators?  RJM's take, though cynical, is probably right -- the parents won't do the time.  But should they?  It's not a perfect analogy but it seems to me this is kind of like a prostitution ring.  The coaches are the prostitutes. Yes, they know they are committing a crime and deserve to be punished for it, but they are also being used.  The parents are the johns - they didn't come up with this scheme; they were enticed into it by a shady guy.  The guy who ran the scheme is the human trafficker and needs to have the book thrown at him. So I don't get why they prosecutors apparently cut a deal with him to rope the others in.  I hope it's not a very good deal, because this is a very, very bad guy.   Maybe some of our lawyers here have a take...

(I'm a lawyer, but never practiced criminal law.  So this is at best a partly-informed answer): 

Your analogy is a good one and you make some good points.  I'd offer two countervailing considerations:  1) Prosecutors often (not always) want a media splash if they can get it--for selfish reasons and unselfish ones.  Being associated with a high-profile prosecution is a good career move.  Unselfishly, the media attention will scare some folks straight, and may persuade others to offer information in exchange for a deal.  Law enforcement caught a guy and he offered to implicate others and expose a wider scheme.  The US Attorney decided it was worth a plea deal to get the others involved.  Without the deal, maybe only the ringleader can be charged and you never read about the prosecution in the news. 

2)  It's good to be the first person to cut a deal; those who want a deal later have to be able to offer valuable information folks ahead of them in the plea deal line did not.  Also, the ringleader really isn't a public figure in this case, but others are.  "John Smith arrested" doesn't make national headlines, but charges against Hollywood actresses and CEOs is (see point #1).  If a CEO or actress had gone to prosecutors before others did, s/he might have gotten a sweet deal.  

Time to start taxing those schools with endowments in the billions..no need for them to have that much in reserve..Trump favors this..the Feds already have their stool pigeon in Singer so the others are unlikely to get no jail time plea deals..that's how the Feds work..there are sentencing guidelines that are fairly rigid...many will be doing time..Lori Loughlin included.

Chico Escuela posted:

fenwaysouth posted:

My thought was exactly the same as PABaseball..."The real question is how bad were the daughter's grades if it was going to take half a million to get her into USC? Wow."  The daughter must have had very low self esteem to watch the parents try to pull this off for her, and probably even lower now that they've been caught.  That kid is going to be messed up and need some serious counseling.

At least one of the kids involved who is attending USC is an Instagram "influencer" with almost 2 million followers.  Several major news stories have covered her and excerpted some of her posts.  Based on those articles, I'd say lack of self esteem is not an issue for her...  

A quick Google search shows USC students have an average ACT of 32.  That's 96th percentile.  Average high school GPA is 3.73.  I have no ties to the school and live on the opposite coast, but based on the numbers, getting in is far from easy.  (And no, a $500k donation isn't going to get your kid admitted at a school with the kind of resources USC has.  Their endowment is $5.5 billion.)

USC a very good school and very hard to get into, no doubt. What I was saying was how bad were the grades that 100k wouldn't even cut it. I also don't think the money was being donated to the school. If I'm correct it was being donated to the fixers and coaches so that they would be accepted as athletes or thru connected people (lower admissions standards). So the school didn't want more money, the person behind the scam said sorry 150k isn't going to cut it. Grades must have been pretty bad.  

Velo From The Stretch posted:

I heard a coach from a local D3  put another way in a recent recruiting seminar q&a session discussing grades. To paraphrase; If he had two ballplayers that were similar, one had a 3.1, and one had a 3.6, He would take the one that had the 3.6 because he has figured out how to mange his extra-curricular activities and still get the school work done. The 3.1 has not figured out how to manage his time and would require extra work on the coaching staffs part to keep the player in school and eligible. Being a college athlete is a grind and HS GPA is an indicator of work ethic and correlates to academic success at the next level.

 

I don't believe this to be true. He will take the better player every time. They don't care too much about what their students are doing once they get there, as long as they are eligible and going to class it really isn't their problem. Now if it were a tie breaker, sure the better student gets the nod, but when comparing two similar players they are going to take the more talented player. 

PABaseball posted:

Velo From The Stretch posted:

I heard a coach from a local D3  put another way in a recent recruiting seminar q&a session discussing grades. To paraphrase; If he had two ballplayers that were similar, one had a 3.1, and one had a 3.6, He would take the one that had the 3.6 because he has figured out how to mange his extra-curricular activities and still get the school work done. The 3.1 has not figured out how to manage his time and would require extra work on the coaching staffs part to keep the player in school and eligible. Being a college athlete is a grind and HS GPA is an indicator of work ethic and correlates to academic success at the next level.

 

I don't believe this to be true. He will take the better player every time. They don't care too much about what their students are doing once they get there, as long as they are eligible and going to class it really isn't their problem. Now if it were a tie breaker, sure the better student gets the nod, but when comparing two similar players they are going to take the more talented player. 

I could see it being true at a high academic. HA’s only get a few academic exceptions. A NESCAC coach told me he got six. But in general I agree they take the better player.

RJM posted:

PABaseball posted:

Velo From The Stretch posted:

I heard a coach from a local D3  put another way in a recent recruiting seminar q&a session discussing grades. To paraphrase; If he had two ballplayers that were similar, one had a 3.1, and one had a 3.6, He would take the one that had the 3.6 because he has figured out how to mange his extra-curricular activities and still get the school work done. The 3.1 has not figured out how to manage his time and would require extra work on the coaching staffs part to keep the player in school and eligible. Being a college athlete is a grind and HS GPA is an indicator of work ethic and correlates to academic success at the next level.

 

I don't believe this to be true. He will take the better player every time. They don't care too much about what their students are doing once they get there, as long as they are eligible and going to class it really isn't their problem. Now if it were a tie breaker, sure the better student gets the nod, but when comparing two similar players they are going to take the more talented player. 

I could see it being true at a high academic. HA’s only get a few academic exceptions. A NESCAC coach told me he got six. But in general I agree they take the better player.

Of course he will, because HA admissions generally do not sign off on students they think can't handle academics at their school.  Coach is going to assume both kids can hack it there, so he'll take the player he wants most.

Apparently, these 50-some cases may be only the tip of the iceberg. The guy who pled guilty was caught on wiretaps bragging he had succeeded in getting over 700 kids admitted though the side door. 

This book was written in 2006. It’s about privilege and legal bribes. He said he’s received a lot of emails over the past two days. The new book could be The Illegal Price of Admission, the book college admissions didn’t know existed. 

USC football may be involved. It will be interesting to see if the NCAA throws the book at the program. How about death penalty?  Until this the other coaches have been under the public eye radar sports 

https://www.usatoday.com/story...-scandal/3142693002/

Gives rich people a bad name.

Based on what I've seen reported to this point about the scandal, I don’t expect there to be sanctions against college athletic programs other than maybe probation, if that.

The reasons that I don’t expect significant sanctions against athletic programs as a whole are that:

1. The students involved aren’t actually college athletes (based on what’s been reported) and didn’t compete for their colleges. Therefore, the teams and athletic programs didn’t actually gain any recruiting or competitive advantage over other universities.

1. While the NCAA clearly has rules regarding “ethical conduct” pertaining to coaches, athletes, and athletic staff members, it doesn’t appear that the type of activities reported fall within the provisions of an ethical conduct violation. These students weren’t athletes and didn’t compete for their teams, so there shouldn’t be any NCAA recruiting or competition violations involved.

1. Also, because these students weren’t athletes, it seems that they didn't receive anything that would constitute academic misconduct or impermissible benefits - at least as those situations pertain to NCAA rules.  

Penalties against individual coaches, however, may be a different story. As we know, some coaches have already been fired as a result of their involvement. Coaches and athletic staff members will be violating the “ethical conduct” rules if they provide false or misleading information to their university or the NCAA when questioned about this situation, or if they refuse to provide relevant information.

It seems that what has been reported so far is just the “tip of the iceberg” with much more to become public knowledge about this scandal. That may cause me to have a different opinion as time goes on and we learn more details.

Rick, I have to disagree that at least some were not "athletes."

Let's look at Yale. The only way a player is "assured" admission is as a recruited athlete; otherwise the player is placed into - and competes - against the regular pool of applicants and, once admitted, shows up to practice. (My son's team had at least one such player every year.) The coach has no "hidden" spots. Moreover, there are special admissions committees whose SOLE PURPOSE is to screen athletic applications - and not a single member picked up a phone or noticed discrepancies in the application. (I won't even get into what the kid thought what was going on when she received the Likely Letter.) Yale admitted an athlete - as an athlete - without checking her bona fides; a simple phone call to the HS guidence counselor, the HS coach, the teachers who wrote LORs, would have revealed the fraud. Yale (and similar institutions [think Stanford] did not have in place procedures which would have easily revealed the fraud; Yale can't fall back on the "we're too stupid and gullible" defense.

Moreover, employees (coaches) are the agents of the University and as such under the laws pertaining to agency legally represent the University (which is the principal). If these schools with huge athletic budgets allow its coaches absolute feeedom to recruit WITHOUT EVER LAYING EYES ON THE KID then that is an institutional failure

If these cases aren't in the category of institutional failures (somewhere I recall that was used against universities in several athletic scandals), it's hard to think of more egregious cases. (How many schools have suffered penalties while the coach waltzes to another similar job?)

RJM posted:

USC football may be involved. It will be interesting to see if the NCAA throws the book at the program. How about death penalty?  Until this the other coaches have been under the public eye radar sports 

https://www.usatoday.com/story...-scandal/3142693002/

No program should get the Death Penalty until Penn State does retroactively

Goosegg posted:

Rick, I have to disagree that at least some were not "athletes."

Let's look at Yale. The only way a player is "assured" admission is as a recruited athlete; otherwise the player is placed into - and competes - against the regular pool of applicants and, once admitted, shows up to practice. (My son's team had at least one such player every year.) The coach has no "hidden" spots. Moreover, there are special admissions committees whose SOLE PURPOSE is to screen athletic applications - and not a single member picked up a phone or noticed discrepancies in the application. (I won't even get into what the kid thought what was going on when she received the Likely Letter.) Yale admitted an athlete - as an athlete - without checking her bona fides; a simple phone call to the HS guidence counselor, the HS coach, the teachers who wrote LORs, would have revealed the fraud. Yale (and similar institutions [think Stanford] did not have in place procedures which would have easily revealed the fraud; Yale can't fall back on the "we're too stupid and gullible" defense.

Moreover, employees (coaches) are the agents of the University and as such under the laws pertaining to agency legally represent the University (which is the principal). If these schools with huge athletic budgets allow its coaches absolute feeedom to recruit WITHOUT EVER LAYING EYES ON THE KID then that is an institutional failure

If these cases aren't in the category of institutional failures (somewhere I recall that was used against universities in several athletic scandals), it's hard to think of more egregious cases. (How many schools have suffered penalties while the coach waltzes to another similar job?)

You make some very good arguments.  And the NCAA could try to impose discipline under some generic "this makes college athletics look bad and you were asleep at the switch" theory.  But no specific rules seem to have been broken.  None of the relevant "athletes" played in intercollegiate games (I assume) and may never have even practiced.  But even if they suited up and were on the roster, Yale wouldn't have taken any athlete who didn't easily meet the NCAA's required index numbers.  Some Ivy League athletes presumably are well below their class medians for HS GPA and test scores (of course, roughly half the class is going to be below the median anyhow...), but so long as they are NCAA-eligible, what rule was broken?  An athlete admitted to Yale is still going to have 90+ percentile test scores and well above-average HS academics.  Yale may have damaged its own brand, but I'd confidently wager the kids involved in this scam had better academic records than a lot of D1 football and basketball players.

Fwiw, I wouldn't (prior to this week, anyhow) have expected anyone in admissions to verify that an athlete a coach was recruiting was actually playing the sport in question.  The coaches are the schools' designated athletic experts.  I assume admissions doesn't routinely investigate applicants' backgrounds unless something raises a red flag.  If a kid says he was in the all-state orchestra or president of the Latin Club, the Admissions Office isn't typically going to call her HS to verify.  I do take your point that athletics is a guaranteed "in" and so arguably different.  But if Yale's soccer coach says she wants an athlete, that seems to me to be institutional due diligence enough that a kid actually plays the sport (again, prior to this week...). 

3and2Fastball posted:

RJM posted:

USC football may be involved. It will be interesting to see if the NCAA throws the book at the program. How about death penalty?  Until this the other coaches have been under the public eye radar sports 

https://www.usatoday.com/story...-scandal/3142693002/

No program should get the Death Penalty until Penn State does retroactively

The Sandusky situation had nothing to do with the football team. Penn State was grossly over penalized as a statement due to the times. The NCAA has already screwed up other investigations and had to hang a program.

That is my reply to bringing Penn State, a not current and long ago resolved situation into the conversation. I’m not doing the dance again. And I have no affiliation to Penn State. 

3and2Fastball posted:

RJM posted:

USC football may be involved. It will be interesting to see if the NCAA throws the book at the program. How about death penalty?  Until this the other coaches have been under the public eye radar sports 

https://www.usatoday.com/story...-scandal/3142693002/

No program should get the Death Penalty until Penn State does retroactively

A very strong case can be made that PSU was over penalized. Giving the program and the current/future players (who were 10 years old when that went down) the death penalty seems pretty extreme. 

Coaches taking money to push fake athletes into the school is probably not worthy of the death penalty either as I'm sure the school had no knowledge in most cases considering the coaches were the ones cashing out, not the universities. Plus, the programs were not benefiting from the situation at all. If anything it hurt their chances of getting actual borderline academic recruits into the school. 

RJM posted:

3and2Fastball posted:

RJM posted:

USC football may be involved. It will be interesting to see if the NCAA throws the book at the program. How about death penalty?  Until this the other coaches have been under the public eye radar sports 

https://www.usatoday.com/story...-scandal/3142693002/

No program should get the Death Penalty until Penn State does retroactively

The Sandusky situation had nothing to do with the football team. Penn State was grossly over penalized as a statement due to the times. The NCAA has already screwed up other investigations and had to hang a program.

That is my reply to bringing Penn State, a not current and long ago resolved situation into the conversation. I’m not doing the dance again. And I have no affiliation to Penn State. 

Bullshit. The reason kids were allowed to be abused was because no one did anything about it to protect the program. By allowing the the program to still exist, they validated the cover-up. Anything short of that, and it was worth it to hide the problem.

Matt13 posted:

RJM posted:

3and2Fastball posted:

RJM posted:

USC football may be involved. It will be interesting to see if the NCAA throws the book at the program. How about death penalty?  Until this the other coaches have been under the public eye radar sports 

https://www.usatoday.com/story...-scandal/3142693002/

No program should get the Death Penalty until Penn State does retroactively

The Sandusky situation had nothing to do with the football team. Penn State was grossly over penalized as a statement due to the times. The NCAA has already screwed up other investigations and had to hang a program.

That is my reply to bringing Penn State, a not current and long ago resolved situation into the conversation. I’m not doing the dance again. And I have no affiliation to Penn State. 

Bullshit. The reason kids were allowed to be abused was because no one did anything about it to protect the program. By allowing the the program to still exist, they validated the cover-up. Anything short of that, and it was worth it to hide the problem.

I know you always have to have the last word. So have it. I’ve already stated I only responded because someone brought up the settled past. I also stated I’m not doing the dance again. So save you breath. Or since it’s online, your fingers. It’s over and done with. We’re on to current events. Go be angry someplace else. Pound your head against the wall if it will help. 

In case anyone is wondering how this case came to light there is a lot in the Boston Globe. The investigation is out of the Boston FBI office.

It started, improbably, with a securities fraud investigation out of Boston, a so-called pump-and-dump stock scam that extended overseas.

FBI agents and federal prosecutors quickly homed in on a financial executive, according to several people familiar with the case, who said he was willing to cooperate with authorities. He also offered investigators a tantalizing tip, one entirely unrelated to stock prices — a Yale University women’s soccer coach had asked him for a bribe to help get his daughter admitted into the elite school.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/me...8HQUs3yUkKP/amp.html

RJM posted:

Matt13 posted:

RJM posted:

3and2Fastball posted:

RJM posted:

USC football may be involved. It will be interesting to see if the NCAA throws the book at the program. How about death penalty?  Until this the other coaches have been under the public eye radar sports 

https://www.usatoday.com/story...-scandal/3142693002/

No program should get the Death Penalty until Penn State does retroactively

The Sandusky situation had nothing to do with the football team. Penn State was grossly over penalized as a statement due to the times. The NCAA has already screwed up other investigations and had to hang a program.

That is my reply to bringing Penn State, a not current and long ago resolved situation into the conversation. I’m not doing the dance again. And I have no affiliation to Penn State. 

Bullshit. The reason kids were allowed to be abused was because no one did anything about it to protect the program. By allowing the the program to still exist, they validated the cover-up. Anything short of that, and it was worth it to hide the problem.

I know you always have to have the last word. So have it. I’ve already stated I only responded because someone brought up the settled past. I also stated I’m not doing the dance again. So save you breath. Or since it’s online, your fingers. It’s over and done with. We’re on to current events. Go be angry someplace else. Pound your head against the wall if it will help. 

I see you're back to projecting. 

Matt13 posted:

RJM posted:

Matt13 posted:

RJM posted:

3and2Fastball posted:

RJM posted:

USC football may be involved. It will be interesting to see if the NCAA throws the book at the program. How about death penalty?  Until this the other coaches have been under the public eye radar sports 

https://www.usatoday.com/story...-scandal/3142693002/

No program should get the Death Penalty until Penn State does retroactively

The Sandusky situation had nothing to do with the football team. Penn State was grossly over penalized as a statement due to the times. The NCAA has already screwed up other investigations and had to hang a program.

That is my reply to bringing Penn State, a not current and long ago resolved situation into the conversation. I’m not doing the dance again. And I have no affiliation to Penn State. 

Bullshit. The reason kids were allowed to be abused was because no one did anything about it to protect the program. By allowing the the program to still exist, they validated the cover-up. Anything short of that, and it was worth it to hide the problem.

I know you always have to have the last word. So have it. I’ve already stated I only responded because someone brought up the settled past. I also stated I’m not doing the dance again. So save you breath. Or since it’s online, your fingers. It’s over and done with. We’re on to current events. Go be angry someplace else. Pound your head against the wall if it will help. 

I see you're back to projecting. 

Yawn

It is kinda late.

2020Hopeful posted:

These people have no shame!!  Our kids have to work their butts off for years to get into these schools the honest way and many who qualify still don't get in!   What happens when their kids get in to a top school on a bribe and then can't meet the academic rigors?  Do their parents bribe employers too??

Those kids are all becoming Instagram influencers anyway.

Regarding the bribery and legacies: a privately funded university never can be 100% about performance, they are for profit organisations. However they also can't lower the standard too much or they would hurt their product and lower the value of their graduations so it is a fine line for the school administration  between maximizing profit and protecting their product.

But this is never an ethical decision but a pure financial one, you want to get in as money from legacies as you can without watering down the product too much. A "good" (as in financially successful) administration just goes to the edge but not over it.

I’ve been mulling this over: what IS okay to use to enhance admission possibilities?

Letters to the college president  from a wealthy alum who knows your kid well? 

Extra notes from alums who happened to teach your kid (in addition to the official  rec letters being sent)

PABaseball posted:

Velo From The Stretch posted:

I heard a coach from a local D3  put another way in a recent recruiting seminar q&a session discussing grades. To paraphrase; If he had two ballplayers that were similar, one had a 3.1, and one had a 3.6, He would take the one that had the 3.6 because he has figured out how to mange his extra-curricular activities and still get the school work done. The 3.1 has not figured out how to manage his time and would require extra work on the coaching staffs part to keep the player in school and eligible. Being a college athlete is a grind and HS GPA is an indicator of work ethic and correlates to academic success at the next level.

 

I don't believe this to be true. He will take the better player every time. They don't care too much about what their students are doing once they get there, as long as they are eligible and going to class it really isn't their problem. Now if it were a tie breaker, sure the better student gets the nod, but when comparing two similar players they are going to take the more talented player. 

THIS is spot on. 

smokeminside posted:

I’ve been mulling this over: what IS okay to use to enhance admission possibilities?

Letters to the college president  from a wealthy alum who knows your kid well? 

Extra notes from alums who happened to teach your kid (in addition to the official  rec letters being sent)

 

 

I think anything legal is ok, these people were part of fraudulent situation. Allegedly they were paying for official grades to be changes, test scores upgraded by  40% and so forth.

I have a wealthy fried who wanted his kid to get into one of the Elite schools, his kid was kinda close but on the outside looking. He had a mutual friend set up a meeting with him and the school, a new endowment was created for a scholarship fur the school...and lo and behold little Johnny had himself a spot in the next class at XYZ University. 

This type of stuff happens all the time, it is legal and honestly there shouldn't be any problem with it. As he told me, it is only money. 

Interesting article in the NY Times today with some details about the kids who were falsely portrayed as athletes (link below).  Goosegg, I have to say this supports the argument you made above that the schools were negligent.  IMO, an advisor or admissions official isn't obligated to check out an applicant's athletic bona fides in ordinary cases; but some of these situations seem to have raised clear red flags that weren't investigated.  That does start to look like a school isn't using reasonable diligence to police its athletics program, and the NCAA could decide to penalize that.

In any event, I think there are going to be quite a few more shoes dropping in this investigation.  And it wouldn't surprise me at all to see some other college consultants arrested for doing similar things--could Singer really be the only one to have thought of this?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0...&pgtype=Homepage

Chico Escuela posted:

In any event, I think there are going to be quite a few more shoes dropping in this investigation.  And it wouldn't surprise me at all to see some other college consultants arrested for doing similar things--could Singer really be the only one to have thought of this?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0...&pgtype=Homepage

One article I read mentioned Singer said he "helped" 800 families.   The 50 indicted so far may just be the tip of the iceberg.

One thing I’m tiring of is the “Woe is me” articles about how this affects other kids.

All through life there will be difficult challenges. Life isn’t easy. Some people just make it look easy because they don’t allow obstacles to get in their way. Losing isn’t final. Losing is a lesson. 

If you don’t get into one college, get into another. If you don’t get one job offer, get another. If doors aren’t opened for you, kick them down. The only reason for failure is giving up. 

I find it fascinating that the colleges are reacting as if they had no part in this scandal and are victims.  After all, they created a process of admissions that is impossibly complex and shrouded in secrecy, then created many "side doors" to admissions (athletics, legacy, affirmative action, etc), then allow individuals (coaches, ADs, board members) to bypass the formal process and provide golden tickets to admissions.  What legitimate business or organization runs this way?  It's no wonder there is corruption up and down the system.

RJM posted:

One thing I’m tiring of is the “Woe is me” articles about how this affects other kids.

All through life there will be difficult challenges. Life isn’t easy. Some people just make it look easy because they don’t allow obstacles to get in their way. Losing isn’t final. Losing is a lesson. 

If you don’t get into one college, get into another. If you don’t get one job offer, get another. If doors aren’t opened for you, kick them down. The only reason for failure is giving up. 

I know what you're saying. Can't help but think of a HS buddy of my son's. Son of immigrants. Public school. Firmly middle class (not upper).The kid was exceptional. 36 ACT, 12 on the writing. 4.0 GPA. God knows how many AP's 15-16, with 5's on all of them.  All sorts of other honors. His dream was to go to MIT, but failing that, an IVY. Was deferred. Is now in a Honors program at the local State Flagship. By no means the worst thing, as I think he is on a full ride. 

   Having said that, he (and his parents), have to be looking at this in disgust, and feeling the system is rigged. They're right. It is.

  But you're also right. There are options. 

Here come the lawsuits ...

Stanford students file class action lawsuit over college admissions scandal

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/14...ss-action/index.html

Cal and Chapman have been identified as being involved. USC has identified six admissions applications in this year’s cycle as connected to the scheme.

Apparently the loughlin family is friends with a high official of usc, she was partying on his yacht. I wonder why lori did not bribe this guy directly and had to go to the coach.

On twitter people are joking "how bad must her grades have been" and crack jokes like "negative GPA" and "can't even write and had her application form filled out by someone else". 

I don't like that either, a bit too much for me.

Btw the coach definitely needs to be fired, even if other  legacies do essentially the same he betrayed his university by taking personal advantage.

Velo From The Stretch posted:

I heard a coach from a local D3  put another way in a recent recruiting seminar q&a session discussing grades. To paraphrase; If he had two ballplayers that were similar, one had a 3.1, and one had a 3.6, He would take the one that had the 3.6 because he has figured out how to mange his extra-curricular activities and still get the school work done. The 3.1 has not figured out how to manage his time and would require extra work on the coaching staffs part to keep the player in school and eligible. Being a college athlete is a grind and HS GPA is an indicator of work ethic and correlates to academic success at the next level.

 

I doubt that's the case...but it does sound good for a seminar q & a session.  It's a D3....the coach isn't concerned with scholarship money, but the 3.6 kid would likely get more academic money than the 3.1 kid (if he can even get admitted, which is a big if at some D3's)....and also making it more likely that the kid would decide to attend that school....so yes, he's probably more inclined to recruit the 3.6 kid i everything else is equal, but I highly doubt it's because he's concerned with what will happen to the kid(s) after they get to college.