ACC Commissioner John Swofford addresses a hall filled with reporters, attempting to convince the room that his conference's recent NCAA infractions are an aberration, not a trend.
"Any time one of our schools has an NCAA problem, wherever it is, whichever one it is, I'm disappointed and concerned because that's not who we are as a league," he said.
Swofford paints a picture of the ACC as a balanced conference - one that may not have produced recent national championships, but still prides itself on sending players to the NFL. He praises the conference as standing for more than just football and heralds its academic successes. This is what Swofford wants his league to be.
But as ACC schools become increasingly ensnared in NCAA controversy, the scandals are beginning to define the league.
Last year, North Carolina made headlines for extending improper benefits to players, and its troubles have only heightened recently. In July, the NCAA slapped Georgia Tech with probation and stripped the team of its 2009 ACC Championship in one swift swoop. Two decades removed from its pay-for-play scandals, an equally disturbing revelation of illegal player benefits rocked Miami earlier this month.
As these three storylines dominate the conference landscape, each university's players and coaches become victims of a problem larger than any one program. Recruiting violations have reached an unprecedented level of normalcy, and even the conference's commissioner knows the league can no longer ignore what it has become.
"We have to slow down, back up, re-evaluate and find better ways to do things," Swofford said. We can't be "sitting here and trying to act like everything's hunky dory."
North Carolina\nDuring his final days as North Carolina's head coach, Butch Davis said he never considered quitting his job. He had spent the past year bludgeoned by NCAA allegations, but resolved to redeem the program.
"I regret greatly that these things have transpired ... and I don't take them lightly," Davis said July 25. "This is a very, very serious issue. It's caused a tremendous amount of embarrassment and hard times for Carolina alums and fans, but we're going to get through this, and because of it we're going to come out of it and be better than we were before."
Two days later, North Carolina Chancellor Holden Thorp decided his program was "going to get through this" without Davis. Thorp fired the coach July 27, adding a new low to the Tar Heels' tumultuous year.
Stories about North Carolina players receiving improper benefits first emerged more than a year ago, but interest spiked in June when the NCAA outlined the team's potentially major recruiting violations. Former associate head coach John Blake allegedly funneled players to NFL agent Gary Wichard in exchange for $31,000 in cash. The report also claimed that tutor Jennifer Wiley gave "impermissible academic assistance" to players by providing free lessons and covering parking ticket fees.
Although the NCAA's report never linked Davis directly to any violations, the coach was intimately involved with hiring Wiley as a tutor and had long-standing connections to Blake prior to appointing him as associate head coach. Blake arrived at North Carolina already tainted by his shadowy tenure at Nebraska, but Davis coached Blake in high school, worked with him briefly with the Dallas Cowboys and believed he could vouch for his pupil's character.
"I take full responsibility for hiring John Blake," Davis said. "There's been an awful lot made about this suspected reputation. I based my hiring him on what I knew of him as a high-school athlete and a high-school student ... Like everyone else, you do all the due diligence that you can possibly do ... There were no apparent red flags put out through that investigation."
Davis nevertheless assumed "full and complete" responsibility for North Carolina's turmoil and now leaves the program in a state of flux similar to what he encountered as Miami's head coach in 1995.
That year, the Hurricanes weren't just headhunting and high-stepping their way to victory. They were accepting improper benefits, ignoring drug testing regulations and beating up Miami track and field captains until the NCAA imposed scholarship sanctions on the team just as Davis took the reins. The similarities between Davis' and Miami coach Al Golden's situations during their first years at Miami are uncanny, as Golden now finds himself embroiled in a new era of Miami misdemeanors.
Miami\nYahoo! Sports reported Aug. 16 that Nevin Shapiro, a University of Miami booster currently incarcerated for his involvement in a $930 million Ponzi scheme, blew the whistle on a spree of wanton NCAA violations alleged to have occurred from 2002 to 2010. Shapiro admitted to providing illicit benefits to more than 70 current and former Hurricanes players - benefits estimated to cost at least $2 million and which took many forms, including cash, jewelry, prostitutes, paid trips to restaurants and nightclubs, use of Shapiro's yacht and estates, and at least one abortion.
The NCAA Aug. 30 charged 12 current Miami payers with accepting illicit benefits. All 12 players are required to pay restitution before being reinstated, and eight also face suspensions of varying severity. Notable among the suspended student-athletes are senior quarterback Jacory Harris with a one game suspension, junior defensive back Ray-Ray Armstrong with four games and senior defensive lineman Olivier Vernon with six. All told, Miami could be missing at least a half-dozen starters for its season opener at Maryland, to say nothing of the seismic emotional toll of the ongoing investigation.
And Al Golden thought he had it rough at Temple. The new coach in Coral Gables spent the past five seasons painstakingly transforming the Owls from one of college football's perennial punching bags into a bona fide bowl game contender. After a 1-11 campaign during his first season in Philadelphia, Golden's patience brought his rebuilding vision to fruition in 2009, when the Owls finished 9-4, the program's best record since 1979. But even that rebuilding project pales in comparison to the current crisis facing his players and program at Miami, where Golden accepted the head coaching position largely because of the storied football history at "The U."
"If you have an opportunity to be at a place where, when it's at its best, it's the best in the country, it's very alluring," Golden said.
From 1983 to 2005, Miami won five national championships, amassed a 230-48 record - an average of 10 wins per season - and assembled lineups so loaded with NFL-ready talent that the 2001 title-winning team alone boasted a staggering 17 future first-round draft picks. In doing so, the Hurricanes solidified their place as arguably the greatest - and undoubtedly the most hated and most feared - football team in the annals of NCAA history.
"If you're on the East Coast, and obviously if you grew up in that whole era [and] ... wanted to go to a place that has competed for championships," Golden said, "I think you would keep coming back to Miami, so it's great to have that opportunity."
That opportunity might have existed under normal circumstances. But Golden's chance to restore Miami to its former glory will be stunted by the recent suspensions and the potential for further NCAA punishments. When Golden landed his dream job at "The U," he said he had no knowledge of the Shapiro scandal, the storm brewing just below the surface.
Golden has refused to make excuses or compromise his values. Rather, he has vigorously defended his players and honored his commitment to what has suddenly become one of the most undesirable coaching situations in the country.
"I think any time you make a change, you better be clear on things that are important to you and what your values are," Golden said. "Obviously you have to set the standard and demand compliance."
Like the sticky air of a summer in Coral Gables, Miami's unmistakable swagger - an unprecedented emphasis on winning at the expense of school and sportsmanship - loomed large over the program's every championship and controversy throughout its gridiron golden age. Now, Golden brings a refreshing focus on discipline to a program in desperate need of a strong and sincere leading man.
"[He's] a very, very passionate guy," senior center Tyler Horn said. "All he wants is the best from us, that's all he asks, and I think that's reasonable. He doesn't ask for anything we don't have; he just asks for what we do have."
In contrast to the former coach Randy Shannon, a player on the 1987 National Championship team whose velvet glove coaching approach alienated players and fans alike, Golden brings energy and an eagerness to return the program to its past dominance while demanding accountability on and off the field.
"He's a very fiery coach," Horn said. "We had one practice where it was just sloppy, and [Golden] stopped it halfway through and just kind of let us know this isn't Miami football and it needs to change. It was a pretty passionate speech and then after that we had a great practice, and so he doesn't let us get away with anything."
With words like "infractions," "suspensions," and even the "death penalty" swirling around the program, Golden has no desire to cultivate the old swagger which accompanied the Hurricanes' glory days - and which also emboldened the program's tolerance of athletic, academic and ethical transgressions occurring at an alarming rate. Yet, he remains committed to a creating a new kind of swagger which can turn the program around in more ways than one.
"Swagger was the byproduct, it wasn't the product," Golden said. "For us, the swagger was developed by demonstrated performance, from having a chip on your shoulder, from work ethic, and from playing with passion. So we have to get back to ... having the right people and having the right mindset."
Georgia Tech\nIf Miami's infractions are deep-rooted and complex, Georgia Tech's are seemingly the opposite. Both schools reportedly provided players with impermissible benefits, but Miami's violations involve $2 million in illegal funding, while Georgia Tech's troubles hinge on $312 in clothing. The Hurricanes' criminal culture spanned decades and remains an ongoing concern. Georgia Tech's NCAA violations faded just as abruptly as they appeared.
Two months ago, the NCAA announced Georgia Tech had knowingly used an ineligible player during its 2009 season and failed to cooperate with a league investigation. Suddenly, the school was serving four years probation, paying a $100,000 fine and sending back its 2009 ACC Championship trophy.
"I was very surprised, just because we didn't hear a whole lot about it," Georgia Tech senior tailback Roddy Jones said of the team's sanctions. "It was kind of put in the back of our minds and forgotten about, so when it came down, we were just as shocked as anybody else."
In the context of college football's more prominent recruiting violations, Jones' surprise at his own team's punishment is understandable. Among an endless stream of major programs stumbling, the Yellow Jackets' crimes look comparatively tame.
"You hear about Auburn, Ohio State, Oregon, even North Carolina," Jones said. "You hear about that stuff all the time, but for us it was something that was kept very closed, very tight-lipped."
The program's immediate punishment actually may have been a blessing for the team, as its open-and-shut nature allowed the program to refocus on football. While Golden's troubles at Miami are just beginning and Davis's troubles at North Carolina were unceremoniously terminated, Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson has been able to survive his team's infractions relatively unscathed. He now says he will let "administration handle it from here," while he "moves forward."
Swift justice is always preferable to a long-drawn out process, but according to Jones, justice was hardly served.
"We don't have to hear about it for years like some of the other programs do, but just having that attached to our program is never good," Jones said. "But we know what we stand for at Georgia Tech and we know that we're a school [that does] things the right way, and we feel like we did. The NCAA may have felt differently, but we still feel like we are a school that is one of the best in the ACC as far as that."
An era of instant gratification\nTo reconcile what has become a disturbing dichotomy between Swofford's ideal ACC and the league's current state, the commissioner is considering "cost-of-attendance" or multi-year scholarships.\n"There are aspects of today's game and the money being generated coupled with numerous student-athlete needs that I think merits adjustment to the grant-in-aid," Swofford said. "I am not for paying players per se. But I am for maximizing the grant-in-aid for full scholarship athletes."
Such a proposal has been polarizing.
"That's a complex question, and really takes a lot of thought, and I think a lot of think tanks and a lot of intelligent football minds," Boston College coach Frank Spaziani said. "There's some unintended consequences of just making a snap decision one way or another."
From one perspective, powerhouse programs like Florida State have an embarrassment of football funding and can hardly justify withholding that wealth from some of their poorer athletes.
"I don't know if it's a stipend, but I think [you need] the full max of a scholarship that you can give to help a situation, because there are some extremely tough situations that occur for kids," Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher said. "I think giving the max that you can give to them [is necessary because] there are some home situations that you can't believe 'til you see."
For others, however, the guaranteed scholarships seem like an unnecessary expense. During his two seasons at Clemson, coach Dabo Swinney always has honored scholarships even to injured players and believes that mandating multi-year scholarships only serves to eliminate players' incentives.
"I would be 100 percent against multi-year scholarships," Swinney told reporters. "You're giving out these multi-year things and you don't have anything out there. A guy [doesn't] want to go to class, he's a discipline problem, he's embarrassing your program, he's doing all these things [and] he's got a scholarship that's good for two, three years ... That's, I think, the wrong route to take."\nMeanwhile, Johnson has already experienced the repercussions of players taking money from outside sources and thus cautiously supports legalizing extra benefits.
"I think anything that we can do to help the players out, I'd be for," Johnson said. "But I think they have to go through and dot their I's and cross their T's, and make sure we're helping [the right people]."
While other coaches debate the various pros and cons of cost-of-attendance scholarships, Virginia coach Mike London approaches the issue from a different angle. He realizes that as three ACC programs - and numerous others across the nation - have already failed to police their players, administrative oversight is inevitable. In a new age of professional amateurism, programs are guilty until proven innocent.
"I think it's a part of the culture that's going on now, because I've always said that we're in an instant gratification [era]," London said. "Players [think], 'My family needs this, they need a TV, they need this,' and you start talking about extra benefits. So I don't know how you [fix] it, but it seems like that's where we are in society now ... [With the] information that is out there, you['ve] got to deal with it"
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