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Thursday, March 22, 2012
 The March Madness (Compliance) Power Rankings
By Gabe Feldman

 With the first weekend of the March Madness behind us, those who want to punch Austin Rivers in the face (what did he ever do to you?) or otherwise obsessively hate Duke are still celebrating what has been called “the biggest upset in college basketball history,” “a stunner,” “a monumental choke,” and “a dreary Disneyfied inconsequence that features all the bigotries of century-old pulp fiction and none of the romance.” (Actually, that last one may have been about John Carter.)

But I want to focus on a different storyline. Because there’s a legal angle behind every sports story — and because I’m not ready to stop looking at college basketball lists — I’ve put together a power ranking of teams based on NCAA violations and run-ins with the law. I’m talking major NCAA infractions, not violations for supplying chocolate milk to student-athletes. (I recognize that some believe that every NCAA rule is the equivalent of a ban on providing chocolate milk to athletes, but rules are rules, and I’ll pick that fight another day.)

As you’ll see, 43 out of the 68 teams that were in the tournament this year have committed major violations. That’s not a particularly surprising number given that it’s a relatively inbred group, with coaches jumping from school to school, often leaving a trail of NCAA violations in their wake. I was actually able to connect all 68 of the head coaches to either Rick Pitino (the prince of conduct unbecoming) or Jerry Tarkanian (the godfather of NCAA violations) in seven steps or fewer (and all but three in six steps or fewer). For example, Scott Nagy, the head coach at South Dakota State, was a graduate assistant with Lou Henson at Illinois; Tony Stubblefield was an assistant to Henson at New Mexico State; Stubblefield was an assistant coach with Mick Cronin at Cincinnati; and Cronin was an assistant with Pitino at Louisville. OK, to make it easier, here’s a fancy chart that diagrams all the connections.

Here's how the basketball programs stack up. Instead of ranking them by number, I've grouped schools by pop culture good guys and bad guys, starting with the innocent, then moving down to the very, very, very guilty.

George Michael Bluth


The innocent — no major NCAA violations, and no major legal trouble.

Honorary Colonel Jessup Award

Lamar (Degrees from Pitino: 5)

Coach Pat Knight uses phrases like “kids are stealing money by being on scholarship,” "tin men with no heart,” “I’ve never been around a team that’s got so many problems,” and “infestation of guys that are hard to coach.” He uses those words as a backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punch line.

Vizzini


No major violations, but still noteworthy.

The Bluejays were sued by a former student-athlete who said Creighton recruited him despite knowing he was not educationally prepared to perform college coursework, and for failing to provide him any real access to its academic curriculum.

Former coach Larry Eustachy taught everyone a lesson about the risks of kissing young women at college parties after losing to Missouri, and about adjusting privacy settings on Facebook.


Before there was Bounty-Gate, there was Goon-Gate, when then-coach John Chaney put in seldom-used Temple forward Nehemiah Ingram to “send a message” to St. Joseph's. Ingram broke a player’s arm on a hard foul and fouled out in four minutes.

Pick Your Favorite (non-Hurley) Lost Character


Major violations, but mostly forgotten or forgiven. Skip down to Duke for the good stuff.

Gonzaga
Purdue
North Carolina
Loyola (MD)
San Diego State
Montana
Kansas State
South Florida
Michigan State
Notre Dame
Murray State

Cobra Kai

Sweep the leg (or stomp the chest).

Duke
If this were an irrational hatred contest, Duke would be national champion. But, with only one major violation (and that was in the 1970s), they’re on the innocent side of the violations spectrum. Yes, Corey Maggette admitted he accepted $2,000 from summer league coach Myron Piggie while in high school, and there are allegations that Chris Duhon’s mother and Carlos Boozer’s father were improperly given jobs by Duke boosters. But I could fill an entire column with questionable behavior that isn’t punished by the NCAA.

Dark Helmet


Smaller schools, big violations, probably surrounded by a-holes.

St. Bonaventure
The Bonnies were hit with a major violation for using an ineligible player who had transferred from community college with a welding certificate instead of an associate's degree. After learning that the NCAA had ruled the team ineligible to play in the Atlantic 10 tournament, the team boycotted the final two games of its regular season.
Western Kentucky
Three major violations, though none in almost three decades, and the Hilltoppers were fortunate that coach Clem Haskins waited until after he left to coach Minnesota to contribute to what the New York Times later called “one of the worst academic fraud scandals in the history of college sports."

George Bluth Sr.


Just dumb.

Indiana
Former coach Kelvin Sampson was sanctioned by the NCAA for more than 500 impermissible calls that were made to recruits while he was coach at Oklahoma. When Sampson got to Indiana, he and his assistants (and the team) were sanctioned for making impermissible phone calls to recruits while on probation for making impermissible calls to recruits.

Vincent Ludwig


Trying to kill the queen is kind of a big deal.

UConn
Most of the violations involved impermissible contact with recruit Nate Miles in 2006. Coach Jim Calhoun was also cited for “failing to promote an atmosphere of compliance.” Calhoun’s (likely) response? “Shut up … And get some facts.”
West Virginia
Clean since the early 1980s, but Huggy Bear’s presence looms large.
Missouri
Mizzou coaches provided meals and transportation and had impermissible contact with recruits and their families. And Duke haters got to gloat that Quin Snyder lost his job.

St. Louis University
No violations in the past 30 years, but two players were recently accused of sexual assault and subsequently suspended from the team.

Alabama
A 2009 violation implicated 16 sports and the Crimson Tide's failure to monitor the distribution of textbooks to student-athletes. (Apparently, some students did not put book covers on their hardcover textbooks.) As the co-author of a sports law textbook (shameless plug!), I am outraged. As a sports fan, I am unmoved. Alabama has run into some trouble this year, however, suspending two players.

Wichita State
After years of paying recruits and falsifying transcripts, Wichita State managed to steer clear of any major violations for three decades. But they couldn’t avoid being sued by their own fans. In 2001, they were slapped with a lawsuit from an unhappy season-ticket holder who took issue with a priority points system for seats.

New Mexico
Only one scandal, but New Mexico gets extra points for having a nickname for it — “Lobo-Gate.” Then-coach Norm Ellenberger and his assistants engaged in a smorgasbord of academic fraud, including forging academic transcripts and paying for phony junior college credits to keep players eligible. The NCAA found 57 rule violations and Ellenberger was later convicted of 21 counts of fraud.

Wisconsin
Members of the basketball and football teams received special credit arrangements at The Shoe Box, a store in Black Earth, Wisconsin. Click here to tour the store.

University of Florida
Then-coach Norm Sloan engaged in unethical conduct and provided an airline ticket for ex-Florida star Vernon Maxwell in 1987. Sloan resigned amid a federal investigation into charges that he had filed false reports with the NCAA. He retired just days after Galen Hall, Florida's football coach (who replaced Charley Pell, who was dismissed for NCAA violations), resigned after he admitted paying two former assistant coaches $22,000 in (improper) salary supplements. It was a really good year for Florida.

Gordon Gekko


I’m talking the remorseless, devious, “greed is good” guy from the 1987 original, not the old, soft, “I love my daughter” reincarnation from 2010.

Louisville
(Insert your favorite famous-coach-has-sex-in-restaurant-then-gets-extorted joke here.)
Florida State
Widespread academic fraud in 2007 involving 61 athletes led the NCAA to strip Florida State of scholarships across 10 different teams and to vacate all wins in 2006 and 2007 that involved the implicated athletes. Not only that, but it turns out Sam Cassell stole his dance move from Major League 2.

Kansas
Multiple violations across five decades, and this gem of a quote from then-athletic director Al Bohl in response to a compliance officer’s request for a larger staff: “Compliance doesn't sell tickets."

Ohio State
Then-coach Jim O’Brien gave a $6,000 cash inducement to the family of a recruit in 1998 and failed to report the violation for more than five years. Another player was found to have received improper benefits and committed academic fraud, which led to three years of probation for Ohio State and forced the Buckeyes to vacate all wins and tournament money earned while the player was on the team. O’Brien was then fired, but fought back and won $2.4 million in a wrongful-termination lawsuit.

NC State
Allegations of possible violations appeared in the Peter Golenbock’s 1989 book Personal Fouls, which led to an NCAA investigation that uncovered impermissible distribution of sneakers and tickets to games. The NCAA banned NC State from the postseason for the following year, which then-coach Jim Valvano said was "as serious a hurt and blow as I have had personally in my life."

Long Beach State
Jerry Tarkanian’s tenure at Long Beach State (1968-73) led to 23 NCAA rules violations. His spirit lived on through the 21st century, as the team allowed six transfers to play even though they were ineligible for admission to the university. There were also many reports of academic fraud, including one instance where an assistant coach forged the name of a proctor on a correspondence exam.

Cal
Then-coach Todd Bozeman paid $30,000 to the parents of Cal guard Jelani Gardner in 1996. How’d we find out about the payments? Gardner’s dad came forward because he was upset about his son’s lack of playing time. Gardner transferred to Pepperdine, Bozeman was fired, and Cal was banned from postseason play for a year and forfeited its wins from Bozeman's final two seasons.

New Mexico State
Academic fraud in the mid-90s stripped New Mexico State of its NCAA tournament appearances from 1992-94. After Aggies coach Neil McCarthy was fired, he sued the school for wrongful termination, which meant additional violations were revealed, which meant additional sanctions were imposed.

Hans Gruber


An exceptional thief.

UNLV
Ten members of the 1990 UNLV team were suspended at one point for an assortment of NCAA violations, and in the nine months leading up to the 1990 NCAA tournament, investigators visited the school 11 times, which is about 10 times more than the United Nations visited Iran’s nuclear plants. Ties to Richie “The Fixer” Perry, who was convicted of helping to orchestrate the Boston College point-shaving scheme in the late 1970s, eventually brought down the program and its coach, Jerry Tarkanian. In case you’re interested (and a little crazy), the negatives of the photos of three UNLV players sitting in a hot tub with Perry can be yours for a mere $2.6 million.
Michigan
Michigan has only been hit once, but it has been hit hard. The NCAA found that four players (Chris Webber, Maurice Taylor, Robert "Tractor" Traylor, and Louis Bullock) received more than $600,000 from booster Ed Martin, who pleaded guilty to laundering money from an illegal gambling conspiracy. The NCAA vacated more than 100 wins, including the 1992 and 1993 Final Four appearances, and left then-coach Brian Ellerbe with an official record of 0-27 during his 1988 and 1989 seasons at Michigan.

Lex Luthor


The greatest criminal mind of our time (the Gene Hackman version, of course).

Cincinnati
The Bob Huggins Era alone puts Cincinnati basketball in rarefied air. The NCAA hit Cincinnati with a host of penalties in 1998, after it found the program exhibited the dreaded “lack of institutional control,” marked by boosters paying players for jobs that didn’t really exist and providing other impermissible benefits to current and prospective members of the team. During Huggins’s tenure, more than 20 players had “significant encounters with law enforcement," including accusations of driving under the influence, punching a horse, taping a roommate to a chair, burning said roommate with a heated coat hanger, and stabbing him in the leg. And only 28 percent of Huggins’s players (27 of 95) graduated, and in four seasons the team’s graduation rate was zero. We award Huggins’s student-athletes no points, and may God have mercy on their souls.

But let’s not put all of the blame on Huggins, who resigned in 2005 after a very public drunk driving arrest. Before he arrived, Cincinnati committed major NCAA basketball violations in 1956, 1959, 1978, and 1988, and was hit with three separate postseason bans (something Huggins managed to avoid). And, the team you're watching in this year's tournament was involved in a nasty brawl with crosstown rivals Xavier early this year.

Memphis
Memphis has had two Final Four appearances (1985 and 2008) stripped because of NCAA violations. The 2008 trip was vacated after the NCAA learned Derrick Rose had used a stand-in to take his SAT, and that Memphis had provided close to $1,700 in free travel to Rose’s brother, Reggie.

After the 1985 season, then-head coach Dana Kirk was fired in the midst of a grand jury investigation that eventually led to an indictment on 11 counts of tax evasion, filing false income tax returns, mail fraud, and obstruction of justice. Keith Lee, the leading scorer on the 1985 team, testified that he had received $40,000 in illegal payments from Kirk.

Kentucky
The Wildcats received the “death penalty” in the 1950s and came perilously close to getting the full monty again in the 1980s after a slew of major violations. And UK is currently coached by John Calipari. It's true that Calipari has personally managed to avoid NCAA sanctions, but he remains the only coach to have had Final Four appearances with two different schools vacated because of NCAA violations — Memphis in 2008, and UMass in 1996.

Keyser Soze

Syracuse
On the one hand, Syracuse only has one major violation. On the other hand, with the Bernie Fine scandal, coach Jim Boeheim’s initial reaction to the accusations, and a Yahoo! piece that reported the program was "awash in positive drug tests and, in many cases, failed to adhere to its internal drug policy while playing ineligible players,” we may be in the midst of our drop-the-coffee-mug moment with the ‘Cuse (and the Fab Melo team suspension over an “eligibility issue” isn’t helping with the trend).

Hannibal Lecter


The worst of the worst.

Baylor
Murder, drugs, lies, and cover-ups. The Patrick Dennehy tragedy was as ugly as it gets and led to the “partial death penalty” for Baylor in 2005 and a 10-year show cause penalty on former coach Dave Bliss for “despicable behavior.” (Not that Baylor needs more to cement their status at the top of the rankings, but the team was also sued by a recruit in 1994 after a Baylor employee submitted doctored homework for the student’s correspondence courses at the Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God, which made him ineligible for the 1993-94 season. Three members of the coaching staff were convicted on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, and mail fraud.)