🚀 go-pugleaf

Miami has finally received its notice of allegations from the 
NCAA, a long-awaited document accuses the Hurricanes of a "lack 
of institutional control" within its athletic department.

The allegations arrived on Tuesday. The institutional-control 
charge is typically one of the most severe the NCAA can bring 
after an investigation of rules violations. The governing body 
for college athletics declined comment Tuesday, one day after 
revealing that it was erasing some elements of its case against 
Miami because the information was obtained in impermissible ways.

"We deeply regret any violations, but we have suffered enough," 
Miami President Donna Shalala said in a statement Tuesday night.

A person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press 
that several former members of Miami coaching staffs are named 
in the notice of allegations, including Missouri basketball 
coach Frank Haith, who was with the Hurricanes from 2004-11.

Next up: The sanctions phase, where Miami's penalties will be 
decided. The Hurricanes have already self-imposed several 
sanctions, including sitting out two bowl games and a conference 
football championship game. Shalala said Monday she believes 
those punishments should be enough.

This saga started in September 2010, when the university told 
the NCAA that convicted Ponzi scheme architect and former Miami 
booster Nevin Shapiro made allegations to the school against 
former players. Shapiro said he interacted mostly with football 
players and recruits, as well as a significantly smaller number 
of men's basketball players.

Shapiro is serving a 20-year prison term for masterminding a 
$930 million fraud scheme.

"Many of the charges brought forth are based on the word of a 
man who made a fortune by lying," Shalala wrote. "The NCAA 
enforcement staff acknowledged to the University that if Nevin 
Shapiro, a convicted con man, said something more than once, it 
considered the allegation 'corroborated' � an argument which is 
both ludicrous and counter to legal practice"

Miami wants to get through the sanctions portion of the process 
as quickly as possible. But typically, it takes about three 
months for a hearing, and then can take several weeks � if not 
months � more for the penalties to be handed down. The sides 
coming to a settlement beforehand is another possibility.

Shalala said Miami will work diligently to prepare a response to 
the allegations within 90 days.

"We trust that the Committee on Infractions will provide the 
fairness and integrity missing during the investigative 
process," Shalala wrote.

Miami and the NCAA have gone back and forth on the wording of 
the notice of allegations for several weeks, and the long-
awaited letter was nearly delivered last month. That's when the 
NCAA acknowledged that some mistakes were made by its own 
enforcement department. And that resulted in some allegations 
coming out of the letter.

It also led to yet another delay in the process, which many at 
Miami believe has dragged on for way too long.

"This cannot end quickly enough," Miami coach football Al Golden 
said earlier this month.

Within about six months of Miami originally bringing the 
information it had on Shapiro forward, an NCAA investigation was 
quietly underway, and the story became widely known in August 
2011 after Shapiro provided Yahoo Sports with details of what he 
claimed to have given dozens of athletes, recruits and coaches 
over an eight-year period.

Among the gifts Shapiro alleged to provide: Memorabilia, cash 
amounts both large and small, dinners, strip-club trips, 
prostitutes, and even an abortion.

Shalala, however, labeled most of those alleged benefits as 
"sensationalized media accounts."

"Despite their efforts over two and a half years, the NCAA 
enforcement staff could not find evidence of prostitution, 
expensive cars for players, expensive dinners paid for by 
boosters, player bounty payments, rampant alcohol and drug use, 
or the alleged hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and 
gifts given to student-athletes, as reported in the media," 
Shalala wrote. "The fabricated story played well � the facts did 
not."

Several Miami football and men's basketball players have either 
served suspensions, paid restitution or both in the past two 
years after their involvement with Shapiro was discovered. 
Apparently upset with how people he thought were friends turned 
their back on him following his conviction for the Ponzi 
operation, Shapiro vowed that he would take down the program, 
and his attorney � a Miami alum � was willing to help the NCAA's 
cause.

Documents released Monday by the NCAA showed that Shapiro's 
attorney, Maria Elena Perez, offered to assist investigators 
working the Miami case by using subpoena power to depose 
witnesses under the guise of a bankruptcy case. NCAA enforcement 
officials accepted her offer, even feeding her questions to ask 
for at least one of the depositions, and records show they paid 
at least $19,000 for her work � though she billed them for three 
times that much.

Perez did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday night. 
Shawn Eichorst, the Nebraska athletic director who held the same 
role at Miami for some of the NCAA probe, also declined comment. 
Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt, who was the AD at 
Miami for some of the time when Shapiro was a booster, did not 
respond to a request for comment.

Shalala also said former Miami athletic director Paul Dee, who 
held the job before Hocutt, also was not interviewed by the NCAA 
before his death in May 2012. Dee also was a member of the 
NCAA's committee on infractions, most notably when sanctions � 
including a two-year bowl ban, scholarship reductions and 
vacating victories � came down against Southern California in 
2010, stemming from improper benefits given to then-Heisman 
Trophy winner Reggie Bush by sports marketers. Dee chaired the 
committee at the time, then saying "higher-profile players 
require higher-profile monitoring."

"The NCAA enforcement staff failed, even after repeated 
requests, to interview many essential witnesses of great 
integrity who could have provided first-hand testimony, 
including, unbelievably, Paul Dee, who has since passed away, 
but who served as Miami Athletic Director during many of the 
years that violations were alleged to have occurred," Shalala 
wrote. "How could a supposedly thorough and fair investigation 
not even include the Director of Athletics?"

Any allegations that came from the answers given in those 
depositions were taken out of the Miami case, the NCAA said on 
Monday when it unveiled the scope of its alliance with Perez and 
acknowledged that missteps were made. The NCAA's vice president 
of enforcement, who oversaw the Miami probe, has been ousted, 
and some investigators who worked the case are also no longer 
with the association.

That prompted Miami to lash out strongly at the NCAA on Monday, 
with Shalala saying "the lengthy and already flawed 
investigation has demonstrated a disappointing pattern of 
unprofessional and unethical behavior."

The NCAA declined comment Tuesday about Shalala's remarks, which 
included a demand that Miami not face any additional sanctions.

http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/ap-source-miami-receives-
notice-allegations-18542240

��

��