"Meet the Bag Man" by SBNation

I'd like to think we are totally clean of this but it sounds like the schools don't really have any control over the situation. It's not them, it's motivated fans with cash to spare.

"Hey, man," he calls to the bartender.

"If I told you right now the [team] would win the SEC this fall and go to the Playoff, but only if you gave me 10 grand, would you do it?"

"sh#t, man ... will you take a check?," the bartender asks. "But if you could really do that, I'd probably get the cash together in a day or two."
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This happens as long as the money appeals to recruits. That will never change -- these are kids in high school getting paid not to visit other schools and so and so. A lot come from a poor background. And as long as the fan following is intense enough that fans will want to spend money this way. The whole thing sounds so utterly broken and unfixable.

 
zoogies said:
I'd like to think we are totally clean of this but it sounds like the schools don't really have any control over the situation. It's not them, it's motivated fans with cash to spare.
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Eh.

At SEC schools it's both - you've got these guys running all of this stuff, for the most part, independent of the school (or at least the coaching staff), but you've also got administrators and officials at the school that are actively involved in illegal and unethical practices. There is undeniable proof of this, on record, for schools like Alabama & Auburn, yet nothing is done about it.

I'm sure stuff like the article happens here; guys with an unhealthy desire for our school to be great and the money to do something about it, but with guys like Bo Pelini and Tim Miles and John Cook and Darin Erstad and Tom Osborne, there's just no way that our athletic department is deliberately crooked like that. Completely squeaky clean? Of course not, nobody is, but you couldn't ask for more moral or ethical consistency from the majority of our athletic department past and present (in my opinion).

 
Landlord of Memorial Stadium said:
zoogies said:
I'd like to think we are totally clean of this but it sounds like the schools don't really have any control over the situation. It's not them, it's motivated fans with cash to spare.
Click to expand...
Eh.

At SEC schools it's both - you've got these guys running all of this stuff, for the most part, independent of the school (or at least the coaching staff), but you've also got administrators and officials at the school that are actively involved in illegal and unethical practices. There is undeniable proof of this, on record, for schools like Alabama & Auburn, yet nothing is done about it.

I'm sure stuff like the article happens here; guys with an unhealthy desire for our school to be great and the money to do something about it, but with guys like Bo Pelini and Tim Miles and John Cook and Darin Erstad and Tom Osborne, there's just no way that our athletic department is deliberately crooked like that. Completely squeaky clean? Of course not, nobody is, but you couldn't ask for more moral or ethical consistency from the majority of our athletic department past and present (in my opinion).
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image.jpg

 
Landlord of Memorial Stadium said:
zoogies said:
I'd like to think we are totally clean of this but it sounds like the schools don't really have any control over the situation. It's not them, it's motivated fans with cash to spare.
Click to expand...
Eh.

At SEC schools it's both - you've got these guys running all of this stuff, for the most part, independent of the school (or at least the coaching staff), but you've also got administrators and officials at the school that are actively involved in illegal and unethical practices. There is undeniable proof of this, on record, for schools like Alabama & Auburn, yet nothing is done about it.

I'm sure stuff like the article happens here; guys with an unhealthy desire for our school to be great and the money to do something about it, but with guys like Bo Pelini and Tim Miles and John Cook and Darin Erstad and Tom Osborne, there's just no way that our athletic department is deliberately crooked like that. Completely squeaky clean? Of course not, nobody is, but you couldn't ask for more moral or ethical consistency from the majority of our athletic department past and present (in my opinion).
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BUT...yet our program gets slammed by fans because we can't compete with these programs for those top players.

 
Polo, I don't see what's so naive about that. We live in a completely and radically different culture than anywhere in the south, and our program has always been atypical and at least marginally unique as far as how we have approached football at least (talking in terms of observable stuff such as schemes, conditioning, roster management, etc).

It's idealistic but not unrealistic to believe that we would deviate from status quo or acceptable behavior with stuff like this as well, given the context of the culture of our state, the testimony of our more notable personnel, etc.

 
The quesrion is "Even if all 125 other FBS programs are doing this, would we want to as well?"

Of course we dont want to, but would we have a choice.

 
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