Will Miami Scandal Signal the End of ACC Football?

Was this guy's stolen money worth it Miami? 

Ever since I heard about the Miami allegations, I've been in a daze. The worst part will be the wait to find out what happens. It's been more than a year since the allegations at North Carolina, and they still don't know what kind of sanctions they're going to face, but they suspended a ton of players, Butch Davis was fired, and their athletic director is going to step down. In other words, a lot of bad stuff has happened at UNC, and this Miami scandal is much bigger than North Carolina's. The Shapiro story doesn't so much show a renegade program, but a program that purposely looked the other way, and that's bad enough. One of my friends thinks Miami is going to get off easier than Southern Cal, but I think he's in denial. The process needs to be played out, but I'll come out and say I believe about 80 percent of what Shapiro is saying, and even if only a quarter of what he said is true, it's still the worst story about a program in more than 15 years (Alabama).

What I think will happen: 2 year bowl ban, about 35 scholarships reduced over a 3-year period, and a ban from TV for one year. I hope it's not that bad, but a part of me thinks the sanctions could be much worse. If I were working at Miami, I'd suggest voluntarily giving up going to a bowl game this year so that future football players aren't penalized. The biggest tragedy of all? Just as Shapiro was out of the picture, and the Hurricanes landed a great coach in Al Golden, and a lot of optimism was building around the program, none of it will matter. I think Golden sticks around for one season, proves his worth this season, and then leaves for Penn St. when Joe Paterno retires after this season. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but if I am, it's a result of the hangover I'm still feeling from reading the Yahoo! story. It's enough to make any college football fan sick to their stomach, and I'm not naive enough to think things like this aren't happening all over the country. Let me put it this way, does your school have millionaire alumni with outsized egos with a large interest in athletics? Yes, it does. You should be worried too.

Now to the question I asked at the beginning. Will this Miami scandal signal the end of ACC football? I watched the 30 for 30 documentary on Southern Methodist and everyone mentioned how the SMU scandal had the effect of destroying the Southwest Conference. If Miami is penalized the way I think it's going to be, and North Carolina also gets hit hard, then we're talking about a conference with some severe limitations. Throw in the fact that Florida St. and Virginia Tech have been mentioned as possible candidates to join the SEC, and the ACC looks like a radically different conference.

There has been speculation about the six current BCS conferences combining into four super conferences, with the Big East and Big XII being dismantled. But the Miami situation puts the ACC in a very fragile situation. It could be that the Big XII, with Oklahoma, Texas, up-and-comers Oklahoma St., and middle-tier Missouri and Texas Tech survives to expand to 16 teams, and the ACC and Big East are forced to join one of the four remaining conferences. Imagine if Florida St. joins the SEC, the banner program for the ACC would be Virginia Tech, and then who? A rebuilding Miami would be years away from being competitive again, so the second banner team would be Georgia Tech? Maryland? Boston College? And who would they pick up? USF? Pittsburgh? Syracuse? In other words, the ACC would be in the same category as the Big East, by far the two weakest conferences of the six BCS conferences.

The repercussions for Miami will last a long time. I think it's going to be a much harsher repeat of the mid-90's when the NCAA imposed a one-year bowl ban and a reduction of 24 scholarships over two years. Who's to blame? First and foremost, the Miami administration for chasing money and enabling a booster like Nevin Shapiro, then Shapiro for just coming into the consciousness of Miami athletics, and then all the players who knowingly broke the rules and disregarded Randy Shannon's warnings to stay away from Shapiro. The NCAA is going to put the "U" in for extended nap time, let's just see where the dominoes fall for the rest of the teams affected by Miami's inability to monitor itself.