Operation Varsity Blues: college coaches have accepted bribes, according to the FBI, and the NCAA is investigating

A water polo coach from the University of Southern California sent a breathless e-mail to his sports director in February 2014, boasting of a promising rookie.

"[He] would be the fastest player on our team, "said Jovan Vavic, pointing out that the high school student could swim 50 yards in 20 seconds, beating even the fastest players on the USC team.

"This kid can fly," he added.

On the surface, it seems to be a typical match for a potential recruit. The only problem? The athletic profile and performance of the student were fake, fabricated by a criminal brain – William Singer – to whom the athlete's parents had paid tens of thousands of dollars to facilitate the admission process, according to an affidavit of the FBI.

And Vavic, the coach, participated in the scheme, federal officials said.

[College admissions bribery scheme affidavit]

The alleged example is that of a dozen people quoted in a bomb reported Tuesday that wealthy parents allegedly paid bribes to Singer – through his alleged non-profit organization, the Key Worldwide Foundation – so that their children are admitted to elite universities.

In most cases, Singer used a three-pronged approach to do this: first, by paying money to standardized testing officials to inflate student SAT or ACT scores, the affidavit is written . He also allegedly plotted and bribed college coaches to be considered athletes in order to gain access to certain universities through what he termed a "side door" – even though students had little or no athletic aptitude, said federal officials. Finally, Singer would have worked with the parents to disguise their bribes in donations to his nonprofit organization, thus allowing them to be struck off their taxes.

"Ok, so who are we? . . we help the wealthiest families in the United States to educate their children, "Singer reportedly told parents, according to the transcript of a phone call included in the affidavit. "My families want a guarantee. So, if you say to me, "Here are our notes, here are our results, here is our ability, and we want to go to school X", and you give me one or two schools, then I'll go after those schools and try to get a guarantee. "

On Tuesday, Singer pleaded guilty to charges of racketeering, money laundering and obstruction of justice. A total of 50 people were indicted – 33 parents and 13 "coaches and associates of Singer companies". These coaches included John Vandemoer, Chief Sailing Coach at Stanford University; Rudolph "Rudy" Meredith, former head coach of football at Yale University; and Mark Riddell, counselor at a private school in Bradenton, Florida.

The allegations cast an unhealthy light not only on the often enigmatic admission process in colleges, but also on the world of college recruiting athletes. As a result of the charges, the NCAA stated that it would investigate the extent of fraud and corruption alleged by the Department of Justice.

"The charges presented today are troubling and should be of concern to all of higher education," said the NCAA in a statement Tuesday afternoon. "We are reviewing these allegations to determine to what extent the NCAA rules may have been violated."

It is unclear what violations that would include or which schools would be involved. NCAA representatives did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday night.

According to Don Jackson, a sports lawyer who teaches sports law at the Cumberland School of Law, there is a "very realistic possibility" that the NCAA will do essentially nothing in this case.

On the one hand, there is no decisive test imposed by the NCAA for the ability of a player that coaches must establish.

"You assume that a coach will not spend time recruiting a player who does not have the ability to participate in the program," Jackson told the Washington Post.

"There may be some guilt that will weigh on schools for lack of institutional control," said Jackson, citing a term commonly referred to in the NCAA's sanctions against football for basketball programs renowned for their state . The NCAA could also discover that the schools had failed to maintain "an atmosphere of conformity within their sports departments," he said, although he warned that it was still too early for the say.

"Aside from perhaps payments to coaches, it may just be that there has been no objectively provable violation of the NCAA," Jackson said.

Among the most disconcerting details included in court documents, there was the extent to which Singer would have made sports profiles for the children of his wealthy clients. In several cases, according to the affidavit, he used Photoshop to change the faces of the students in photos of real athletes to give more authenticity to their applications, even if the photos are not necessarily essential to the recruitment of athletes.

Such faked photos were "rather pathetic and comical," said Jackson. "To the extent that this is true, and these are all allegations at the moment, this was troubling and is really indicative of an effort to adopt fraudulent behavior."

It is also unclear whether high school students admitted to colleges under the guise of being athletes have ever accepted to receive NCAA scholarships. In the case of the rookie of water polo at the USC, the student was finally admitted and joined the water polo team as a "warmer side spokesman", then left the team after one semester, according to the affidavit.

Some of the coaches named in the indictment reportedly brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars, Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky from the Post reported:

Prosecutors also charged Gordon Ernst, former head coach of tennis in Georgetown. Authorities said he had won $ 950,000 to promote several students as potential tennis recruits, while they were not tennis players of this caliber.

For example, according to prosecutors, Ernst designated the daughter of a California couple as a "potential place" and her candidacy falsely stated that she had played tennis at a university club and that she had reached the top 50 junior rankings of the US Tennis Association in his senior years. In fact, she had not participated in any Tennis Association tournament in high school, officials said.

Prosecutors wrote: "At its best, she appears to be ranked 207th in Northern California in the women's under-12 division, with a 2-8 win / loss record."

In a statement, Georgetown said that the school was "deeply disappointed" to learn the charges against Ernst and that he "has not coached our tennis team since December 2017, following an internal investigation that had revealed that he had violated the university's admissions rules, Georgetown fully cooperated with the government's investigation. "

On Tuesday, officials from many colleges involved in the project said they were not aware of illegal activities. Many have taken swift action against the appointed coaches in the indictment.

USC officials said Vavic, the water polo coach and deputy chief sports officer, Donna Heinel, had been removed from office and that they would seek to identify the funds that the university had received through the program.

"USC has not been charged with any wrongdoing and will continue to cooperate fully with the government's investigation," said the USC Sports Department. tweeted. "We understand that the government believes that the illegal activities were perpetrated by individuals who have made great efforts to conceal their actions at the university. USC is conducting an internal investigation. "

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