Fiesta Bowl scandal could put BCS game in play
THURSDAY, 14 APRIL 2011 11:26

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/fiesta-bowl-scandal-could-put-bcs-game-in-play
New Jersey would be viable location for one of college football’s biggest games
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
College football media partners, marketing partners, boosters, and politicians should be circling the date of April 28 for a meeting near the site of the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. That's the day when a subcommittee of the National Collegiate Athletic Association reviews the license that the group has given to Fiesta Bowl operators to run the annual game in Glendale, Arizona.
The Fiesta Bowl is part of the Bowl Championship Series with Glendale hosting a national championship game every four years. The Fiesta Bowl, South Florida's Orange Bowl, Pasadena, California's Rose Bowl and New Orleans' Sugar Bowl are college football's big events and are worth a lot of money. Each bowl is a fiefdom and one of the reasons that there isn't a college football championship is that none of the powers to be behind those particularly bowls wants to cede one iota of importance that those bowls have.
Until the NCAA gets all of the fiefdoms to agree that a college football championship game that makes (financial) sense, the system will not change. That is unless Congress decides to remove the NCAA’s tax exemption status and the part of the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 that applies to the group.
Neither action seems to be very likely.
The sacking of Fiesta Bowl chief executive John Junker along with two other top officials could open a Pandora’s Box of problems for Glendale, the Fiesta Bowl and the (college football's) Bowl Championship Series for Arizona politicians who allegedly accepted gifts from Junker.
Arizona elected officials have to abide by state laws, which included an “entertainment ban” that prohibits, state employees and elected officials from accepting tickets or "admission to any sporting or cultural event" for free.
The Fiesta Bowl organizers have been summoned to New Orleans to meet with NCAA members and will be given a day in the NCAA courtroom to explain away a 276 page report by a Fiesta Bowl Special Committee that provided unique details of "excessive" spending on employees and the relationship between Arizona politicians and bowl officials. Apparently Arizona elected officials had no problems accepting gifts from Fiesta Bowl organizers which is a violation of Arizona laws if the gifts bestowed on the elected officials were more than $500.
The Fiesta Bowl organizers seem to have thought the best way to keep their fiefdom going was to have Arizona’s elected officials at their side.
Some Arizona lawmakers are "amending" their campaign financing reports to reflect that they suddenly remembered they took money from Fiesta Bowl officials or got tickets for the game or went on Fiesta Bowl related trips or received campaign contributions from Fiesta Bowl employees.
The Fiesta Bowl officials apparently knew which palms to grease. Among the politicians that got some benefits from the Bowl hierarchy include Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, Senators John McCain and John Kyl, Congressmen J. D. Hayworth and Shadegg. McCain's Political Action Committee — Straight Talk Express — also got some money from bowl officials. Additionally, there were Fiesta Bowl employees who gave $46,000 to 23 political candidates who were reimbursed for their campaign contributions by the Fiesta Bowl.
Interestingly enough, The Goldwater Institute is not involved in any complaining against the Fiesta Bowl which seems to be a contradictory stance for the conservative fiscal watchdog group. The Goldwater Institute doesn't want Glendale to sell bonds to help complete the sale of the NHL's Phoenix Coyotes to a Chicago businessman, Matthew Hulsizer, nor do they seem to care that things didn't work out attendance wise for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox during the 2011 Cactus League Spring Training part of the baseball season at the new Glendale baseball park.
Glendale had an open checkbook for the NFL's Arizona Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill (a new stadium), former Phoenix Coyotes owner Richard Burke (a new arena), Jerry Reinsdorf's White Sox, the McCourt family's Dodgers (a new spring training facility) and the city is attempting to work with Jerry Colangelo to build the headquarters for USA Basketball in Glendale.
The Goldwater Institute is nowhere to be found on this issue. Meanwhile, another watchdog group — the not for profit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics of Washington, D. C. — has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission and asking the agency to investigate whether any laws were broken in the Fiesta Bowl's campaign contribution acts.
It will be interesting to see how the NCAA will put together the investigation. Will the NCAA consult cable TV partner, the Walt Disney Company, on this matter? Does the NCAA really want to go after the Fiesta Bowl and pull the license or will they slap someone on the wrist and say don't do that again knowing that every bowl committee does what is best for them not the "game" of college football?
A question that should be directed to NCAA delegates deciding the weighty matter of bowl licensing is this. Do they want a championship game in Glendale or can they line the coffers with another organizer in a bigger market?
Will the NCAA revoke the license and then put the fourth game of the Bowl Championship Series up for bid? If the Super Bowl can be played in East Rutherford in February in 2014, why not a Bowl Championship Series game at the Meadowlands in January? Think of the money that could pour into the BCS if New Jersey, Jerry Jones and his Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas or Dan Snyder's and Washington Redskins stadium in Maryland outside of the District were involved in a bidding war for that spot in the Bowl Championship Series?
The NCAA more than likely should not be trusted with a real investigation of a bowl and corruption. After all this is a body that created the term "student-athlete" to get out of paying disability benefits in the 1950s after a Colorado football player could not work because of an injury suffered on the football field. This is an organization that pockets billions in television money yet limits players' off field, off court, off ice, off diamond earnings to be $2,000. This is an organization that receives a tax exemption from Congress and colleges whose football teams appear at say the Fiesta Bowl don't have to pay taxes on their take from the game.
School presidents and chancellors shop around looking for conferences that will further exposure (big money TV contacts).

This is an organization that has somehow convinced people and politicians that "student-athletes" should be lucky to get a scholarship and feel fortunate that they can play for good old whatever university and entertain stadium or arena audiences, boosters, advertisers, politicians and have their talents used by coaches who earn millions annually from schools, marketing partners and TV partners.
In New Jersey, the state's highest paid employees are the Rutgers football coach and the men's and women's basketball coaches. Go around the country and you will find that college football or basketball coaches are the highest paid employee in a good number of states.
College sports is nothing more than a business.
Congress holds hearings on college sports every so often and generally these hearings go something like this. Congressmen genuflect in front of NCAA honchos then complain about the unfairness of the Bowl Championship Series in that only BCS members have a real shot at a title and that outsiders are just that outsiders with a limited chance of ever winning a NCAA football championship.
Never once do these hearings ever produce anything worthwhile for the "student-athlete" who has to prove to a coach annually that he (or she) is worth the scholarship and if a marginal player gets hurt and is unable to return to sports, that athlete loses their scholarship. The myth of the student-athlete is just that.
A myth.
In Arizona, politicians are scrambling for cover. In New Orleans, Fiesta Bowl officials might be scrambling for the cover of Bourbon Street if indeed the NCAA pulls the bowl game license. The NCAA doesn't seem to be too concerned ever with "moral" problems. The group has pulled two bowl licenses, the Seattle Bowl and the Silicon Valley Football Classic, because the games were poorly attended.
The NCAA is acting because people were caught with their hands in the cookie jar and dispensing money to court politicians. The whole college sports industry needs a review but as long as there is money to be made and college presidents and chancellors looking for the yellow brick road for that pot of sports gold, nothing will change. The Marx Brothers lampooned college football in 1932 in “Horse Feathers,” a remarkable movie that hit on corruption in college football and nothing has changed in 79 years since that Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, S. J. Perelman, and Will B. Johnstone came up with a screenplay that had Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Groucho Marx) recruiting players for Huxley for their big game against Darwin. The plot and the jokes of "amateurism" in 1931-32 could easily be used today.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle.

The Jock Sniffers Vaporized USC's 2005 Season and Reggie Bush's Heisman


By Evan Weiner

September 14, 2010

http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/the-jock-sniffers-vaporized-usc-s-2005-season-and-reggie-bush-s-heisman

(New York, N. Y.) -- Dear National Collegiate Athletic Association or should this be sent to the jock-sniffing presidents, chancellors and provosts of big time college athletic programs? If the University of Southern California and Reggie Bush did not exist in 2005 because Reggie Bush received "improper benefits" while he matriculated in the Los Angeles school --- and played football for now is a ghost team in NCAA record books ---- why aren't you refunding money you took partially based on Bush and his USC teammates prowess to over-the-air and cable television networks, ticket holders to USC games, marketing partners and radio networks who bought your product?

While we are at it, since the 2005 season was vaporized, why shouldn't cable TV subscribers get a refund too for helping to finance college sports programs, particularly the 92 or so percent of the cable TV universe that pays for sports programming as part of the :"basic enhanced" experience and never watches a sports event.

To the people who run USC (and the NCAA), how about a refund on all of those Reggie Bush shirts that you marketed and sold to people. It is funny that schools sell shirts of the team's most popular players yet a lot of those players don't have the means to buy their own shirt. They also don't see a cent from the sales of the shirts.

The NCAA has found fraud based on their rules --- we give the player a scholarship in exchange that allows the player to basically be a pro in training and a school fundraiser --- and the NCAA has penalized the University of Southern California by stripping the school of a title that was won fairly on the gridiron and punishing Bush who is long gone from the school by saying he was ineligible. The 2010 and future teams will be paying the price as USC has been stripped of a number of scholarships.

Bush has given up his Heisman Trophy that he won in 2005. Bush has been vaporized. He and his Trojans teammates don't exist in the paper and viral world anymore. At least according to the jock-sniffers who run the NCAA. So if that's the case, then the NCAA should be returning money to everyone because the august college board has decreed that some sort of fraud has taken place.

But the real crime is that the NCAA is punishing people for violating their rules and yet will not return any money to the victims of the fraud---paying customers, paying marketing partners and television networks. The public according to the NCAA was duped by Bush who took money from what can be best described as friends of the program and thus all of USC's accomplishments of that year have been wiped out.

The jock-sniffing college presidents, chancellors, provosts through their proxy, the NCAA, can say all they want about maintaining the integrity of college sports. The integrity of college sports has never existed. It’s an illusion. Big time college sports is a business. The football and basketball programs are cash cows and colleges will attempt to bend every rule in the book to field a good team.

The jock-sniffing presidents, chancellors and provosts think having strong teams build campus spirit and make alums feel good about the school. They think the alums will become boosters and pump money into the schools. There is a phalanx of financial support that goes into college sports starting with Congress giving big time sports schools a tax exemption. The networks, Sumner Redstone's CBS, Disney's ESPN, General Electric's NBCUniversal, Ruppert Murdoch's FOX, Turner Sports, the regional sports cable TV networks and all of the broadband components that come with the media lords give money. There are the marketing partners and advertisers including a very involved gaggle of sneaker companies, the boosters and the slums---who presumably buy the luxury boxes and the club seats and leave their cars in special parking areas and dine in stadium and/or arena eateries, everyday fans, and the college kids who are given a morsel and able to buy tickets at a discount rate.

All of those constituencies make the college sports industry work. The players are merely a cog in the machine who get scholarships that allow them to take classes and possibly get educated but the football and basketball players' main concerns are playing for good old fill-in-the-blank college or university. The Ivy League schools allegedly de-emphasize sports and don't give scholarships. But they do give grant-in-aid and if you are a player at Harvard or Yale, you have a great rolodex as the schools of the Ivy League give players the phone numbers of important and not so important alums.

Reggie Bush was supposed to just be a cog. He was supposed to play by the rules approved by the real powers of college sports, the jock-sniffing presidents, chancellors and provosts. He was supposed to be a "student-athlete" which was a term invented by college powers in the 1950's to shield colleges from paying workman's compensation in the event a player got injured. Bush and his colleagues are supposed to not receive any more than $2,000 a year for working an outside job. A rule designed to protect schools not players from a player getting a highly paid do-nothing job from an important alum--the rule theoretically evens the playing field as some schools have rather wealthy benefactors while others don't.

Bush and his fellow players are expected to participate in voluntary workouts and perform while their likenesses are sold by the NCAA to video game producers for profit and their uniforms are also sold for profit to adoring fans. The players don't see a dime from the video games. Their names are not used but their likeness is used and there is a court case taking place to decide whether the players are entitled to video game money.

Bush broke the NCAA rules and he gave up his Heisman. It would be rather interesting to see someone launch a class action suit against the NCAA for selling a product that was fraudulent in the world of the NCAA. A world that is stacked against the student-athlete. But the NCAA will escape unscathed. The 2005 season for USC and Bush never existed. That is the determination of the jock-sniffing college presidents, chancellors and provosts who have rigged up a system with a one sided contract that favors schools and gives players little rights.

The players should be grateful that they get scholarships and a chance at an education.

People who watched Bush and USC know that there were games on the field but in the holier than thou bizarro world of college sports, those games never existed yet the NCAA cashed in and made money off of Bush and USC. Bush's exploits are on tape and unless the NCAA gets a court order that destroys the tapes of Bush's 2005 season to destroy all evidence that Bush played, the jock-sniffing college presidents, chancellors and provosts are as fraudulent as they claim Bush is.

If the public was hoodwinked as the jock-sniffers claim, then the people who put up money for the entertainment (and that is what college sports really is) are due damages for investing in a fraud.

Evan Weiner is an award winning journalist, TV-radio commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com