Elite college coaches in bribe scandal
Kickbacks taken for getting non-athletes in
The latest scandal to taint US college athletics hit sports far from the spotlight and exposed a seamy side-door into some of the nation’s elite universities: coaches taking bribes to recruit non-athletes and help them ease past tough admissions policies.
Federal indictments unsealed in Boston yesterday outlined a sweeping college admissions bribery scandal that ensnared coaches and officials at several top schools. The charges touch lower-profile sports such as tennis, sailing and water polo, and have pulled in prestigious schools such as Stanford, Texas, Yale and Southern California.
The indictments expose how coaches and schools use lists of “designated recruits” to bypass normal admissions requirements.
Most National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules that regulate recruiting are designed to prevent schools and coaches from giving improper benefits and enticements to athletes. Federal officials say “Operation Varsity Blues” uncovered parents or college placement services paying coaches to help non-athlete children get into elite schools by falsifying athletic credentials and claiming they were being recruited to play sports.
The schools involved will wait to hear from the NCAA about possible infractions and penalties, and the bribery allegations provide an interesting wrinkle: The schools and coaches didn’t game the admissions process to gain an edge on the field. But the NCAA does have rules regarding ethical conduct by coaches.
Private and public schools with even the most rigorous academic entry standards allow leeway for student athletes to keep their teams competitive. Coaches provide school admissions officers with lists of “designated recruits”, even in cases where they might only receive a partial scholarship or limited financial aid. In most of the sports involved in this case, few athletes receive full scholarships.
It’s those “designated recruit” lists that offered a pathway into school for students who would never compete.
In one case, the bribe came in cash paid to a coach in a hotel parking lot. In others, bribes were paid as donations to charities or businesses the coaches controlled, or in trading stock shares. In at least two cases, it’s unclear whether the coaches kept the money or spent it to help fund their sports programmes.
Athletes certainly enjoy preferential treatment in the admissions process. Ed Boland, college access expert
According to the federal indictments, former Yale football coach Rudy Meredith put a student who didn’t play football on a school list of recruits, doctored her supporting portfolio to indicate she was a player, and later accepted US$400,000 ($583,600) from a college placement company head.
The Ivy League does not give athletic scholarships, but student athletes are given preferential treatment when it comes to admission and financial aid, said Ed Boland, a former assistant director of admissions at Yale and expert on college access.
“There are what we called ‘hooked’ students and ‘unhooked’ students,” he said. “Hooked students have some kind of advantage, either from an underrepresented geographic area, a recruited athlete, son or daughter of an alumus or alumna or an underrepresented ethnic group. Athletes certainly enjoy preferential treatment in the admissions process.”
Texas law requires the campus to accept in-state students who graduate within the top 6 per cent of their high school class. That leaves everyone else competing for the final spots.
Federal officials allege Texas men’s tennis coach Michael Center took bribes in excess of US$90,000 — including US$60,000 in cash in a handoff outside an Austin hotel — to help a student get into school in 2015 by designating him a a recruit and sending him a letter for a “books” scholarship. Once enrolled, the student left the team and gave up his scholarship.
Other coaches indicted were Stanford’s sailing coach John Vandemoer, former Georgetown tennis coach Gordie Ernst, UCLA men’s football coach Jorge Salcedo and Wake Forest volleyball coach William Ferguson. At Southern California, former women’s football coach Ali Khosroshahin, former women’s football assistant coach Laura Janke, water polo coach Jovan Vavic and current senior associate athletic director Donna Heinel also were charged.
Most of the schools quickly distanced themselves from the bribery schemes by firing or putting the involved coaches on immediate leave.