30 biggest college football scandals of all time
By Ethan Lee
Nevin Shapiro and Miami
The Miami Hurricanes aren’t a stranger to major college football scandals, but still, ones involving men arrested for Ponzi Schemes are still pretty rare and fairly noteworthy. In 2011, it was revealed that Nevin Shapiro, a former Miami booster who had been arrested for a Ponzi Scheme, was working with the NCAA to uncover violations that had occurred at the university he had once donated to.
And there were quite a few violations that had occurred at Miami that Shapiro directly was involved in. Charles Robinson of Yahoo! Sports spoke with Shapiro for over 100 hours in jailhouse interviews, uncovering the mess that had been made at Miami.
Shapiro was turning his back on the program he once helped prop up by providing players with impermissible benefits. According to Shapiro, once the players went pro, they no longer associated with him.
So he was revealing everything he had done for the program. And, according to Robinson’s reporting, that was quite a lot.
From extravagant parties to paying players directly to just about anything in between, Shapiro had committed a long list of NCAA violations in his way of helping the Hurricanes. And then by revealing all of them to the NCAA, he helped bring the program under sanctions.
The NCAA hit Miami hard, slapping the Hurricanes with scholarship reductions, limiting certain aspects of recruiting, and placing the program on probation, according to The Miami Herald. Miami also self-imposed several sanctions as well and there were penalties placed on coaches as well.