"A former member of the USC football coaching staff alleged in a lawsuit Monday that undergraduate students were paid to pose as graduate assistants from the team to take online classes on their behalf and fulfill their degree requirements.

Rick Courtright, USC’s defensive quality control assistant from 2016 to 2018, said in the lawsuit he overheard graduate assistants Brett Arce and Austin Clark discuss working with defensive coordinator Clancy Pendergast to pay two students with low-level positions in the program to take online classes for the graduate assistants.

The lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court said Courtright later witnessed Pendergast, who is named as a defendant in the complaint along with the school, hand an unspecified amount of cash to Clark. The graduate assistant then gave it to one of the students.

“Upon witnessing these events, Courtright believed that the actions of Pendergast and the Graduate Assistants violated state and federal laws and regulations including academic fraud and fraud with the NCAA,” the complaint said.


Courtright reported the allegations to USC’s athletic department compliance office in June 2017, the lawsuit said, and also filed an anonymous complaint with the school.

“USC is investigating the allegations in the lawsuit,” a USC spokesman said in a statement. “The university strives to ensure compliance with NCAA rules.”

The lawsuit said Courtright subsequently reported concerns that the graduate assistants might have violated NCAA rules by driving full-time assistant coaches while they recruited, and used a school courtesy car for personal reasons. That came after USC athletic director Lynn Swann sent a memo to athletic department employees in October 2017 asking them to report illegal or questionable activity in the aftermath of the FBI’s arrest of men’s basketball assistant coach Tony Bland in the college basketball corruption probe.

The lawsuit said Courtright also reported that players warmed up before games without protective equipment or full-time coaches present to supervise them. That included an incident where two players collided and received concussions, according to the lawsuit, during warmups before USC’s game against Washington State in September 2017.

The complaints triggered retaliation against Courtright, according to the lawsuit, and led to his ouster from USC."



Undergrad students posing as grad assistants to take tests for them?

A graduate student taking a test for an undergrad would make more sense. Heck, it seems that Southern Cal has trouble keeping their coaches academically eligible ?

Weird, if true.


https://www.latimes.com/sports/usc/la-sp...story.html

Programs like Purdue or Arizona probably still have legit grad assistants, but the grad assistant job at places like Alabama and USC has crossed over to a very weird place. The NCAA's limit on the number of coaches means that some people are willing to take those high profile jobs for no pay at all. The resume boost is worth a year with no income.