“Does anyone know in this case, in regards to NCAA rules if the “booster” in this case is giving equipment for the purpose of benefiting an individual, does that run afoul of “benefits to individuals” part of NCAA rules for boosters/parents (RAIs)?”
If you want the thing to be a locked down 100% quid-pro-quo, then sure it violates the rules. Just like it would be illegal if Harvard told Daddy Kushner that both his sons would 100% get into Harvard for a $2 million check. But Harvard and Kushner are smart enough to leave it vague and therefore legal.
Parents typically have interaction with the coach as part of the recruitment process for the kid. So you could certainly have some wink-wink gray area discussions as the two sides are trying to gauge each other. Just like Harvard and Kushner would do.
Singer’s clients, in contrast, wanted a sure thing. Which would require you to cross the line from a gray area into 100% cheating and fraud.
Only question would be how much does the coach really want the new crew boats vs. better rowers. And, as noted previously, it would be much harder to do this gray area stuff where the team is higher profile and also very high level competitively.
Bottom line – I bet Singer (himself a coach) didn’t create this out of whole cloth. He just pushed it to 11.
There are dozens of different ways to be recruited, to apply to the school as a recruit.
A friend was committed to a service academy so stopped recruiting at other schools. Changed his mind, contacted a few schools and did everything in February of his senior year - applied to the schools, worked out all the details, the coach found a place on the team and lots of money for him. He had average grades but those weren’t really a concern. He’d miss the early signing of the NLI so couldn’t sign until April. Not a problem.
Most of these ‘side door’ kids did apply on time because they didn’t want to stand out to admissions in any way - they wanted to be with the big pack of athletes applying in Nov, with the early signing NLI group. But if a coach wants to get an athlete admitted after the deadlines, it’s not all that hard to do.
Was the Macy/Huffman daughter admitted to any school? I’ve not read anything that she was, only that her SAT was ‘corrected’ to increase the score.
Actually, I don’t think it is illegal for an organization to give someone benefits in return for a donation, even if the benefits are made explicitly. What might be illegal is if Harvard made a quid-pro-quo explicit and then Kushner claimed a full tax deduction for the full $2 million without subtracting that benefit. But if Kushner adjusted his tax deduction accordingly, everything would have been legal, I believe. Perhaps not ethical, but legal.
This is true, and my son emailed his recruiting video and academic information to a dozen or more coaches, but it is really up to the coach to reach out to those athletes they want to recruit and in all but a few cases (usually a top athlete), it’s the norm.
My larger point is it would take unusual nerve for a parent to strike up a quid pro quo discussion with a coach who has already contacted their child, clearly showing interest in recruiting them. It makes a lot more sense for them to let the process play out and see what is offered then to risk offending the coach - which would be the more typical reaction, if we assume that most coaches won’t take a bribe. Just saying that I really think that deals like this would almost always need a broker.
Note that there are some universities playing NCAA Division 1 sports (including FBS) where student-athletes must meet normal admission requirements. Example:
I’m not sure what you mean here. I wasn’t implying the athletes don’t have to meet normal admission standards. I was talking about the timeline and Berkeley having a second round for rejected athletes. I haven’t seen that.
USD announced today that the coach involved there was Lamont Smith, the head basketball coach who left USD last year after being arrested for allegations of domestic abuse. I had a feeling all along that is who it was.
I don’t know how athletic donations work. If parents make a donation to the team, doesn’t the money have to go through development people? Can the financial aspects be handled directly by the coach? And if it goes through development, are any questions are asked by development people about the who and the what, if anything, is expected in return?
Allowing coaches to handle donations directly, and instructing development people to process donations without asking any questions about who and what in return, seems to be giving coaches a lot of discretion about selling admission to the university in return for team equipment. This really is a side door at a discount compared to the usual cost of the back door.
At least in the Yale soccer coach case, it looks like it was the coach who made the first overture about the bribe, not the parent. But he was definitely negotiating some deals directly.
@Gourmetmom “My larger point is it would take unusual nerve for a parent to strike up a quid pro quo discussion with a coach who has already contacted their child, clearly showing interest in recruiting them.”
Yes – I don’t think this would apply to a student-athlete so outstanding in their sport that the coach is legitimately recruiting them. The irony is that previous to this scandal most people thought the corruption in college sports was coaches arranging to pay (i.e. “bribe”) the recruits into coming to their school – not the other way around. (For Div 1 big revenue sports)
But this scandal was enlightening in that it provided a lot of knowledge about how valuable having a coach’s endorsement as a “tip” can be from the perspective of an affluent parent who wants their child admitted to that university. Both the U. Penn and Yale coaches got paid in exchange for designating a student as a recruit. Those students clearly passed muster as “students” (everyone agrees that at Ivies any recruit has to pass an admissions committee) but that is unlikely to turn what cc posters often call “average excellent” students into admitted students. So the pull a coach had to designate an “average excellent” (or sometimes just an “average good” student) as a recruit was worth a lot of money. Those parents were paying (under the table) hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege of paying $70,000/year tuition for their kid to attend a certain school.
A legal version of that is Kushner’s dad making a $2.5 million donation the year he was applying. No promises, just an enormous advantage for a so-called “qualified” student who otherwise has almost no chance at all. It seems plausible that the equivalent kind of “legal” donation could be made right to the athletic department for the tip. In fact, I think in some of these cases, some of the money did go to the athletic department to be used for the benefit of students – but what made it illegal (in the case of the U Penn basketballl player) is that not all of it did. But I seem to recall that the indicted coach had to give the information about the incoming money to another assistant coach when he was leaving U Penn to take a different job. So some of that donated money must have also gone to the institution, which benefitted. The U Penn basketball coach didn’t pocket all the money the dad paid in exchange for his son being named a recruit - the program itself also got some.
Edit: I looked up the story in the U. Pennsylvania newspaper The Daily Pennsylvanian. They reported: “Allen [U Penn basketball coach who took the money] testified that Ira Bowman, former Penn men’s basketball assistant coach, was aware of and involved with the bribery scheme, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. After Allen was fired in March 2015, Esformes was allegedly worried about his son’s position on the team, Law360.com reported. In response, Allen created an additional account for Esformes to wire money to, providing Bowman with a debit card to access the account.”
So I was mistaken in saying that the university got any benefit, but it is suggestive that Allen told another coach about it and instead of doing the logical thing and saying “um, no” and reporting it, the second coach also did the same thing. It makes me wonder if this kind of stuff happens so frequently that the 2nd coach didn’t immediately report this but instead participated.
NO, the coach can’t take money directly from parents. There are a lot of rules about boosters (and parents can be boosters) giving money and items to teams directly or even through administration. If direct payments were allowed, parents would be paying for vacation for coaches, paying for air travel, liquor, etc. If you want to see how it was in the ‘Bad Old Days’ look at the 30 for 30 (ESPN documentaries) on the U of Miami and SMU. Suitcases full of cash going both to and from the school.
Parents absolutely reach out to coaches who recruit their children to discuss financial matters. This is not an anomaly. Children normally do not do financial pre-read paperwork themselves.
“Was the Macy/Huffman daughter admitted to any school? I’ve not read anything that she was, only that her SAT was ‘corrected’ to increase the score.”
Sophia Grace Macy is 18 years old and graduated from high school last year. I have not seen any references to her enrolling or being admitted to any college. She may be in a gap year, since her dad was quoted (pre-scandal) as being strongly in favor of a gap year for her.
USD is a totally fine school – the college I went to is about the same level. But it isn’t impossibly tough to get into. 50+% admit rate and an ACT middle 50% range of 26-30.
And if you can’t get into USD, there’s plenty of other fine and fairly similar schools that would be a little less selective.
Particularly at smaller schools and/or smaller sports, there is often some kind of “Friends of [College] Field Hockey” that parents donate into. Often, some kind of contribution is expected or strongly encouraged. This obviously would be happening with small time sports programs and with kids who aren’t getting athletic scholarships.
In a lot of places, it isn’t all that different than when the local kids come knocking at your door asking you to support the HS band or HS baseball team.
During my kid’s small time college sports career, we would get emails from the coach actively soliciting contributions from parents. With the money going to pay for totally legit things like new uniforms or equipment.