August 19th Update

Shapiro (Left) and former Hurricane Willis McGahee

Hurricane of Trouble in Miami

• Sportico has recently touched on various universities being investigated by the NCAA for different types of violations and misconduct. We were hoping the string of programs to come under fire was done, but unfortunately for the University of Miami, it has not. The results of a 5-month investigation has been released and it does not look good for Hurricane fans.
• Miami fan Nevin Shapiro was recently sentenced to prison for running a $900 million Ponzi Scheme. He started telling stories of benefits he gave University of Miami athletes (mostly football players), both former and current. This includes paying bounties to players for hurting opponents, providing them with drugs, prostitutes and on at least one occasion, paying for an abortion for a child one of the players would have been a father to. These claims were all well documented by Shapiro; the NCAA has yet to determine what punishment the team will face.
• Miami recently replaced their head football coach with Al Golden taking over for Randy Shannon. It is not yet known if Golden was aware of the investigation when he took the job. Many have called for the “death penalty,” or for the NCAA to not allow Miami to play football for a full year. This has only happened once in the history of NCAA football and is unlikely as many people think that penalty will never be enacted again, although heavy punishment is likely to result from this.
  

Bad International Relations

• College basketball teams are allowed to take one international trip every four years to play club teams. These trips are meant to build team cohesion, to give athletes an international experience, and to let them play against players they probably will never see in the United States. These idealistic thoughts lead John Thompson III to take his Georgetown Hoyas to China.
• The Georgetown Hoyas were playing the Bayi Rockets in Shanghai. A hard fought game was ended prematurely when Thompson pulled his team off the court in the fourth quarter, with the score tied at 64, after a brawl broke out. One of the Georgetown players was hit by a chair, and a Hoyas fan was knocked down after being hit with a bottle.
• We at Sportico are not entirely sure what caused the ruckus, but there are reports that the Rockets were playing dirty and the referees were not calling the game evenly (as recorded by a 57 to 15 free throw advantage for the Rockets)
• The Hoyas and Rockets are scheduled to play again on Sunday, which will also be when Vice President Joe Biden is in the country to visit his counterpart. This trip (along with a similar trip by the Duke Blue Devils) was hailed by the State Department as an example of Sports Diplomacy but it looks like that didn’t work out as well as Hillary Clinton's department would have hoped.