(09-28-2017 03:53 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Maybe this is my cynical side coming out... but pretty much every school has determined that the risk is worth the reward. The chances of finding NCAA violations at EVERY Division I program (much less the power programs) is pretty high if you dig enough. Every Division I school is living in a glass house in today's world. That's the byproduct of the NCAA pretending that these athletes are amateurs and driving would normally happen in an open free market where people are paid what they're actually worth in the marketplace into an underground economy. Top recruits get offered money by shoe reps, coaches and street agents along with being susceptible to other nefarious interests (e.g. gamblers) because they're very clearly worth more than the value of a scholarship to these schools in terms of ticket sales, donations, TV exposure, etc.

There was a massive point-shaving scandal back in the 1950s. There was the SMU death penalty outcome in the 1980s. There have been countless NCAA recruiting violations that have touched more schools than not over the past several decades. This isn't even a recent phenomenon with all of the TV money that has washed over college sports: these top athletes have ALWAYS been underpaid (as you can't get a lower salary than $0) and, as a result, they have ALWAYS been easy prey for those that can provide them with income that's more in line with what they're actually worth in the marketplace.

Until that economic imbalance is fixed for the PLAYERS, we'll always see scandals like this one. When athletes aren't getting paid what they would be worth in the free market, they're going to constantly get offered ways to bridge that gap by boosters, gamblers, coaches and agents (who in turn are trying to parlay that money given to players into financial gains for themselves).

Yeah but even if we paid players 100k a year they would still be offered even more by boosters and shoe companies looking to gain an advantage.