College basketball’s 30 biggest cheaters that tainted the game

18. University of San Francisco

One of the most dynamic programs in college basketball’s early history was the San Francisco Dons. The University of San Francisco, buoyed by a pair of future Hall of Famers in K.C. Jones and Bill Russell, won a pair of national championships in the 1950s.

That success carried over into the 1960s and 1970s, where the Dons were NCAA Tournament fixtures, but things started to get a little dicey. The NCAA placed the school on probation twice in the ’70s for questionable recruiting practices and booster involvement, a warning sign of what was to come.

These probationary measures led to San Francisco constantly changing coaches, which didn’t make university president John Lo Schiavo happy. Lo Schiavo publicly declared in 1980 that he would shut down the program if any further rules violations occurred.

That is exactly what happened, with a booster group paying players large sums of money while athletes received preferential treatment in the classroom. Lo Schiavo had enough, shutting down the Dons’ basketball program in 1982, a decision designed to be potentially permanent.

The program eventually returned in 1985, but the Dons have only reached the NCAA Tournament once since their revival. San Francisco has gone to the postseason five times in the last decade, so perhaps there are brighter days ahead for the Dons after all.