Wilfork Named in Miami Booster Scandal (Well-Corroborated Allegations)

Re: Wilfork named in Miami Mess

don't see why any of the players would get in trouble

i'm hoping the school does , though

break the rules, get punished, the players weren't nfl players when they broke those rules, so the nfl shouldn't be able to penalize them.

no surprise when a school like this gets in trouble, none at all

free shoes u , the U

usc

some places just can't follow rules.

Re: Wilfork named in Miami Mess

Look, it's been a dirty little secret the past FIFTY years...the NFL and the NBA have their own free developmental league within the NCAA. Any team that desires to be a perennial top ten power BREAKS the NCAA rules every season. This is NOT news.

Re: Wilfork named in Miami Mess

I've always felt athletics and college education should be two separate things.

Re: Wilfork named in Miami Mess

jmt57 said:

My first thought was that he might have some issues with the IRS, not the NFL.

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What's the Statute of Limitations on that?????

Re: Wilfork named in Miami Mess

Disco Volante said:

I've always felt athletics and college education should be two separate things.

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You know why you never hear about scandals in college hockey or baseball? Because they have a viable minor league system for those who are not "college material" and they can get paid. Do the same thing for football and basketball. Let them get paid or learn a skill if the sports don't pan out. As others have written, the NCAA is a joke...

Re: Wilfork named in Miami Mess

MoLewisrocks said:

Phew... I came home to this thread title and thought he might be in trouble with Bianca...

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Doesn't appear to be news to her.

One source corroborated Shapiro’s account of the $50,000 cash payment, verifying they were on hand and witnessed the cash being taken from a box in a locked drawer [the source referred to it as Shapiro’s “drawer safe”] on the second floor of Shapiro’s home and delivered to Wilfork and his then-fiancée in a paper bag. The source described the cash as five stacks of $10,000, each bound in a bank ribbon.

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Re: Wilfork named in Miami Mess

Actual Wilfork allegations, from Allegations: Vince Wilfork - Investigations - Yahoo! Sports

• A $50,000 lump sum payment during Wilfork’s junior season. Shapiro said the payment was made to secure Wilfork’s commitment to Shapiro’s sports agency, Axcess Sports, which he co-owned with then-NFL agent and current UFL commissioner Michael Huyghue. Wilfork eventually signed with Axcess Sports and his first NFL contract was negotiated by Huyghue.

• Multiple cash gifts totaling in the thousands of dollars.

• Three bounty payments totaling $1,250. A bounty of $500 was paid for a sack and unsportsmanlike conduct penalty by Wilfork in a 41-16 win over Florida on Sept. 7, 2002. A second bounty of $250 was paid for a sack by Wilfork in a 38-33 win over Florida on Sept. 6, 2003. A third bounty of $500 was paid for a fumble recovery by Wilfork in a 22-14 win over Florida State on Oct. 11, 2003.

• Multiple trips to nightclubs where Shapiro paid for VIP access and drinks.

• Multiple fishing and leisure trips on the booster’s $1.6 million yacht.

• Multiple meals at Miami-area restaurants.

• Lodging, food and drinks at Shapiro’s $2.7 million Miami Beach home.

• A washer and dryer worth approximately $1,500, which was picked up at the home of Shapiro’s mother by Wilfork, Santonio Thomas and one of Shapiro’s employees.

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Re: Wilfork named in Miami Mess

Disco Volante said:

I've always felt athletics and college education should be two separate things.

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In a logical world they would be.

There are too many administrators, coaches, and television networks making big $ off the current system. There are also too many rich boosters/alumni obsessed with their teams success who base their donations to the school off sports. And that is why it won't change soon.

Re: Wilfork named in Miami Mess

Gwedd said:

Well, as a Music Major in college, I would have been scr3wed, blued and tattooed had they treated me like an athlete.

I had a scholarship and I also was freely racking up bucks playing gigs in my off hours. It was th only way I made it through school. I didn't have any family support and the scholarship only paid for tuition & books, all the fees and my costs for an apartment, and food fell squarely on mu own shoulders.

If an athlete in ANY sport can get some bucks from an agent or an endorsement or a booster of wherever, then God Bless him and may the NCAA leave him the h3ll alone.

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But you were breaking the rules.

Every school I know of requires that students not work during he school year. But it can be argued that you actually worked for that money, as opposed to being given enticements, so it's a different thing.

Re: Wilfork named in Miami Mess

ausbacker said:

I did say every college program of note did I not?

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PSU is the second most popular team in America after Notre Dame.

Re: Wilfork named in Miami Mess

mgcolby said:

Nope, I was just repeating what I heard. And EOM needed the analogy spelled out for him.

Given that most non-sports scholarships are given based on a combination of need and talent and are year to year, its more than possible that after the student gets paid for making music they are no longer eligible for a scholarship the next school year based on need. But I doubt they would come back and ask for the previous year's scholarship money back. And it varies from school to school.

What I do know is that none of the faculty members on the panel spoke out against the statement.

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A student can get paid just not during the school year.

But, a football player can get paid too when school is not in session. They can get paid for work. Just like a musician.

Re: Wilfork named in Miami Mess

Fencer said:

The internship analogy is bad for a couple of reasons. First, typical interns are small contributors to the success of the business. But college athletes, as a group, do a large fraction of the contributing.

Second, the classic resume-building benefit is focused on industries where there are many more people with the talent to do the job well than there are jobs available. (Or, similarly, slots in elite graduate schools.) So you invest in college tuition, internships, etc. to increase your chance of standing out and eventually actually getting one of the desirable jobs.

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I think the intern analysis is still a good one when you realize that colleges are non-profits that routinely exploit labor (that labor agrees to be exploited).

As I said earlier, athletics (because of title 9) are not a big money contributor to schools. They are a money drain.

But take a teaching assistant. When I was a TA, I had a 2-2 teaching load and also taught 2 in summer. I was responsible for 240 students a year. When you break it down by credits paid for the classes I taught, I brought in half a million to the school without being reimbursed beyond what football players already get. I brought in more cash than the average football player.

An AD budget is puny when compared to a school's budget, and in the larger scheme of things, it's not even a core part of a school's mission.

Re: Wilfork named in Miami Mess

dhamz said:

Doesn't appear to be news to her.

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Of course it isn't... Bianca has been Vince's defacto agent and COO of Wilfork, Inc. since the day they met.

Re: Wilfork named in Miami Mess

upstater1 said:

I think the intern analysis is still a good one when you realize that colleges are non-profits that routinely exploit labor (that labor agrees to be exploited).

As I said earlier, athletics (because of title 9) are not a big money contributor to schools. They are a money drain.

But take a teaching assistant. When I was a TA, I had a 2-2 teaching load and also taught 2 in summer. I was responsible for 240 students a year. When you break it down by credits paid for the classes I taught, I brought in half a million to the school without being reimbursed beyond what football players already get. I brought in more cash than the average football player.

An AD budget is puny when compared to a school's budget, and in the larger scheme of things, it's not even a core part of a school's mission.

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If you're arguing that grad TAs and adjunct faculty are exploited just as badly, I have no problem with your argument. Personally, I went through grad school almost entirely on fellowship, living at the poverty level and having a dandy time. But I was lucky. Also, it was decades ago.

Re: Wilfork named in Miami Mess

I'd take the money...straight cash homey.

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The athletes can't get jobs debate has always struck me as a struck me as a dumb rule but in the end irrelevant to things like this. It wouldn't have changed anything in any of these situations because the $ isn't comparable. Target or Walmart wasn't going to pay these Miami guys what Shapiro was. In n Out Burger wasn't paying Reggie Bush what he got. No Fortune 500 company was either.

Short of blowing up college football and basketball and going to what baseball has with minor leagues, you aren't ever going to solve these problems. There is too much $ to be lost by doing that and too much $ to be gained by breaking the rules in the current model for this to get fixed any time soon.

Re: Wilfork named in Miami Mess

Fencer said:

If you're arguing that grad TAs and adjunct faculty are exploited just as badly, I have no problem with your argument. Personally, I went through grad school almost entirely on fellowship, living at the poverty level and having a dandy time. But I was lucky. Also, it was decades ago.

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Schools exploit labor in order to keep tuition low. But when considering student "fees" funneled to athletics, one could argue tuition is too high.

I won't argue that coaches and administrators are getting paid way too much.

There are a great many breadwinners who are worth their weight in gold who get paid a lot less than they might earn on the market. The market argument for coaches does not hold water at a non-profit since many people tend to give their labor away for free. It's the whole point of being at a university.

Take this guy: How Three-Dimensional Transistors Went from Lab to Fab - Technology Review

The university opted to release the intellectual property into the public domain instead of patenting it; as the Berkeley researchers kept refining the designs, Hu presented the work at several companies, including Intel.

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What does a university pay a guy like that? Not market rates. Well, maybe I'm wrong, he is after all giving away his work for free.

Re: Wilfork named in Miami Mess

dhamz said:

The athletes can't get jobs debate has always struck me as a struck me as a dumb rule but in the end irrelevant to things like this. It wouldn't have changed anything in any of these situations because the $ isn't comparable. Target or Walmart wasn't going to pay these Miami guys what Shapiro was. In n Out Burger wasn't paying Reggie Bush what he got. No Fortune 500 company was either.

Short of blowing up college football and basketball and going to what baseball has with minor leagues, you aren't ever going to solve these problems. There is too much $ to be lost by doing that and too much $ to be gained by breaking the rules in the current model for this to get fixed any time soon.

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I don't see any ethical principle against agents and such paying players. I don't buy the NCAA's amateurism argument. I'm just against the schools themselves paying players since, for one, I think it's against the school's mission taken as a whole, and two, I know the schools don't make the money people think they do. They lose money. Some of these schools lose $30 million a year on sports (and that's without counting debt service on facilities).

I do believe, however, that once you allow outsiders to pay athletes, the whole sports system will collapse, and with it, so will all the training that players receive on the college level. Coaching, trainers, weightroom people, weightrooms, high tech, doctors, etc. It would hurt the NFL.

As we saw with Aaron Maybin, 20 year olds are simply not ready for the NFL. They need high power training. The NFL though won't institute a minor league for fear they will be funding something like the AHL, AAA baseball, NBDL, these minor leagues draw 3,000 or so a game if they're lucky.

You're not going to be able to train the next generation of great football players when the support is only 3,000 fans a game, and no TV.

I suppose the NFL can contract with colleges to affiliate their minor leagues with different schools, but that would be weird, and I'm not sure alumni or students would care to root for such a team when there's not even a semblance of athletes being students.

Re: Wilfork named in Miami Mess

This stuff happens all of the time ...but it was more prevalent in some schools like Miami. People are always trying to circumvent the rules ....so its no big surprise especially with Miami. Kids are tempted by these rich agents ..so ...who would not take the money and run......with it. Since its after the fact ...the schools suffers for there ...inconsistent enforcement of NCAA guidelines.
I dont believe in pay for play ..but there has to be a better way to regulate student athletes....

“[I asked Wilfork] ‘What’s it going to take for [you] to sign with Axcess [Sports]?’ We gave him $50,000 in cash. He was in the middle of his junior [season]. After that, I was at the draft day party with him – which we put together for him.”

• “He was on my boat a number of times. He stayed at my house. He was in my house. We were in the clubs, although he wasn’t a club guy – but he was there at least 10 times with me. I gave him cash any number of times, just on the cuff, no real reason other than extra help with money.”

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Allegations: Vince Wilfork - Investigations - Yahoo! Sports