How does someone, anyone not catch on sooner and sound a few alarms when a player signs as an athlete who has no athletic history, never plays once while on the roster, etc. Wouldn't even a fellow athlete on that roster see the name and wonder who the hell that is? This would never fly on a D1 football roster which makes sense it seems to be tennis, soccer, etc. But still, amazed coaches even had the guts to go along with that.

Quick name 3 Aggie tennis players ?

Sumlins Pool Guy said:

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Quick name 3 Aggie tennis players ?

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I get your point, I don't keep up with tennis....but there are enough people that do or are connected to the program somehow that a random unknown name on the roster you'd think would cause some questions.

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/ucla-student-had-no-business-playing-for-top-soccer-program-report

Take this one for instance. You have recruiting services rating their signing class for women's soccer at UCLA. They don't catch that one of the signee's in that class has never played soccer?

I saw that the Foundation involved in the scandal gave over $500K to the UT Athletic Department over a two year period, but initially they could not find records of that much giving. If someone wrote a $250,000 check to the booster club at most schools, wouldn't they be calling to set up a session for seat selection and other benefits as well as the chance to hit them up for more money?

I understand that the goal was to get the student into the athletic applicant pool instead of the regular applicant pool,.The athletic department did not care if the student showed up for practice since they were getting a huge gift for a non revenue sport. So the plan for the athletic department was to use their ability to admit sub-optimal applicants as a way to fund Olympic sports.

It would be interesting to see how the admissions profile of the athletic admits compare to the regular admit pool. I highly doubt we will ever see that info. I also think it is hilarious how Governor Abbott called for action by Texas state universities when he was the one person who did the most to deep six Regent Wallace Hall's investigation into the admission scandal at UT, both as AG and as Governor.

I agree, with as much attention as recruiting gets on this site, even minor sports, I don't think it would survive scrutiny from fans much less other boosters. Certainly not those with press credentials rooting for the sips... I could see it maybe happening occasionally, when there is an injury situation where it's obvious someone was given a scholarship even if they got injured and couldn't play again like we've done for a few football players over the years. I remember some times where they had an injury but we didn't renege on the scholarship in football, so I can assumenit also happens in other sports. But even then a pattern would be obvious over time.

Men's tennis for example gets 4.5 scholarships. Not per year, total program. About 1 per year. Because of this, non revenue sports like men's tennis depend on multiple walkons to be part of the legit program roster and often times compete at the varsity level.

It's not like football where every recruit is well known. It would be pretty easy for a tennis coach to sneak a guy who never played tennis in his life past an AD. The other tennis team members would never hear or see the guy at practice or anything.

It should never happen, but obviously it did and that's why it happened in the minor sports. Less scrutiny.

LesterHaze said:

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Men's tennis for example gets 4.5 scholarships. Not per year, total program. About 1 per year.

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This is factually inaccurate. Division 1 Men's Tennis is allocated 4.5 scholarships per year. A program could theoretically award a 1/2 scholarship to 9 players. Or full scholarships to 4 studs and a half scholly to a 5th player.

LesterHaze said:

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Men's tennis for example gets 4.5 scholarships. Not per year, total program. About 1 per year. Because of this, non revenue sports like men's tennis depend on multiple walkons to be part of the legit program roster and often times compete at the varsity level.

It's not like football where every recruit is well known. It would be pretty easy for a tennis coach to sneak a guy who never played tennis in his life past an AD. The other tennis team members would never hear or see the guy at practice or anything.

It should never happen, but obviously it did and that's why it happened in the minor sports. Less scrutiny.

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You touched on something I was wondering about also. A lot of these situations were so they could be admitted with lower admissions standards as athletes. Can an applicant who is going to be put on the roster as a walk-on eligible to be admitted on the lower admissions standard? Preferred walk-on I'm assuming are?

These kids were only "on the team" for a very short period of time. They became recruits, submitted their applicants, were accepted, and then "gave up" their scholarships and just become a regular student. This could happen within a few days and you'd only have to get one secretary that doesn't follow sports to sign off on it. As long as it happened within a billing cycle, it would never show up on any financial audits.

It was brilliant until they set up fake charities to avoid paying taxes and started bribing test administrators for the schools that still require minimum test scores.

Take this to the sports other than football board, wherever that may be. Sips caught up in it so there's that

carl spacklers hat said:

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LesterHaze said:

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Men's tennis for example gets 4.5 scholarships. Not per year, total program. About 1 per year.

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This is factually inaccurate. Division 1 Men's Tennis is allocated 4.5 scholarships per year. A program could theoretically award a 1/2 scholarship to 9 players. Or full scholarships to 4 studs and a half scholly to a 5th player.

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It is semantics.

He was trying to say you don't give 4.5 scholarships each year to new athletes. Some people don't realize scholarships are 1 yr offers that have to get renewed.

So, both are correct. Anyone who has a scholarship allocation from the existing team reduces what is available to incoming players.

Yes... total each year is 4.5 total.

carl spacklers hat said:

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LesterHaze said:

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Men's tennis for example gets 4.5 scholarships. Not per year, total program. About 1 per year.

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This is factually inaccurate. Division 1 Men's Tennis is allocated 4.5 scholarships per year. A program could theoretically award a 1/2 scholarship to 9 players. Or full scholarships to 4 studs and a half scholly to a 5th player.

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We may have a simple semantics disagreement, but my statement is perfectly accurate. Your example is like saying the men's football program can give out 85 scholarships each year. When in fact they give out approximately 25% of the that number each year of the total allocated program scholarships.

At any given time, the men's tennis program can only have 4.5 total scholarships allocated across the entire program. If there is an even distribution of freshman, sophomores, juniors, seniors on the team, then there is roughly 1 full scholarship given out per year.

carl spacklers hat said:

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LesterHaze said:

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Men's tennis for example gets 4.5 scholarships. Not per year, total program. About 1 per year.

---

This is factually inaccurate. Division 1 Men's Tennis is allocated 4.5 scholarships per year. A program could theoretically award a 1/2 scholarship to 9 players. Or full scholarships to 4 studs and a half scholly to a 5th player.

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I question that there would potentially be that many tennis scholarships athletes at any one time . That's a lot.

carl spacklers hat said:

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LesterHaze said:

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Men's tennis for example gets 4.5 scholarships. Not per year, total program. About 1 per year.

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This is factually inaccurate. Division 1 Men's Tennis is allocated 4.5 scholarships per year. A program could theoretically award a 1/2 scholarship to 9 players. Or full scholarships to 4 studs and a half scholly to a 5th player.

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How many tennis players do you calculate could be on scholarship at any one time. Please do the math for me.

Gyles Marrett said:

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LesterHaze said:

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Men's tennis for example gets 4.5 scholarships. Not per year, total program. About 1 per year. Because of this, non revenue sports like men's tennis depend on multiple walkons to be part of the legit program roster and often times compete at the varsity level.

It's not like football where every recruit is well known. It would be pretty easy for a tennis coach to sneak a guy who never played tennis in his life past an AD. The other tennis team members would never hear or see the guy at practice or anything.

It should never happen, but obviously it did and that's why it happened in the minor sports. Less scrutiny.

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You touched on something I was wondering about also. A lot of these situations were so they could be admitted with lower admissions standards as athletes. Can an applicant who is going to be put on the roster as a walk-on eligible to be admitted on the lower admissions standard? Preferred walk-on I'm assuming are?

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Yes they can. Absolutely. But I know at A&M there is a limit to the "exceptions" academically in a non revenue sport like tennis. It's a very small number per year and that must include the scholarship players as well.

LesterHaze said:

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carl spacklers hat said:

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LesterHaze said:

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Men's tennis for example gets 4.5 scholarships. Not per year, total program. About 1 per year.

---

This is factually inaccurate. Division 1 Men's Tennis is allocated 4.5 scholarships per year. A program could theoretically award a 1/2 scholarship to 9 players. Or full scholarships to 4 studs and a half scholly to a 5th player.

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We may have a simple semantics disagreement, but my statement is perfectly accurate. Your example is like saying the men's football program can give out 85 scholarships each year. When in fact they give out approximately 25% of the that number each year of the total allocated program scholarships.

At any given time, the men's tennis program can only have 4.5 total scholarships allocated across the entire program. If there is an even distribution of freshman, sophomores, juniors, seniors on the team, then there is roughly 1 full scholarship given out per year.

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Thanks, that makes a lot more sense.

ashley said:

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carl spacklers hat said:

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LesterHaze said:

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Men's tennis for example gets 4.5 scholarships. Not per year, total program. About 1 per year.

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This is factually inaccurate. Division 1 Men's Tennis is allocated 4.5 scholarships per year. A program could theoretically award a 1/2 scholarship to 9 players. Or full scholarships to 4 studs and a half scholly to a 5th player.

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How many tennis players do you calculate could be on scholarship at any one time. Please do the math for me.

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The exact number changes year to year. I'm guessing a good average would be 8-12 guys. Every one of them with a partial scholarship. Some would be guys with a 10% scholarship or books only. Last year we had Patrick Kipson who was the #1 recruit in the nation out of high school. He was on a full scholly which is totally rare, and that left 3.5 for the rest of the team. He turned pro after his freshman year and so we reallocated this year.

Lateralus Ag said:

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agnerd said:

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These kids were only "on the team" for a very short period of time. They became recruits, submitted their applicants, were accepted, and then "gave up" their scholarships and just become a regular student. This could happen within a few days and you'd only have to get one secretary that doesn't follow sports to sign off on it. As long as it happened within a billing cycle, it would never show up on any financial audits.

It was brilliant until they set up fake charities to avoid paying taxes and started bribing test administrators for the schools that still require minimum test scores.

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"One secretary"

Okay.

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And sometimes they didn't even need the secretary if they were willing to draft the letter themselves:

Quote:

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According to the federal indictments unsealed Tuesday, former Yale soccer coach Rudy Meredith put a student who didn't play soccer on a school list of recruits, doctored her supporting portfolio to indicate she was a player, and later accepted $400,000 from the head of a college placement company.

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Quote:

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Federal officials allege Texas men's tennis coach Michael Center took bribes in excess of $90,000 including $60,000 in cash in a handoff outside an Austin hotel to help a student get into school in 2015 by designating him as a recruit and sending him a letter for a "books" scholarship. Once enrolled, the student left the team and renounced his book scholarship.

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https://www.apnews.com/f49d69167aea4ec6aa5fe3b7d678e3f5

Understood. Yes, semantics issue. I see what you're saying now.

some possibly most of the kids quit the team before the first official practice, unlikely any of these kids were getting a partial scholly. This group of parents were writing 6 figure bribes probably did not want the extra level of scrutiny a scholly would bring. If these kids were costing real student athletes money , a student athlete who got less money would have figured it out pretty quickly

Who cares?

The DOJ and FBI were trying to overturn a national election with the help of the media and the IRS was targeting political enemies of the prior president....

...and people get worked up about a flipping dentist killing a lion in africa, a vet killing a cat with an arrow, and rich people bribing people so their kids can go to a better university.

Our goverment is corrupt. Get your priorities straight.

McInnis80 said:

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I saw that the Foundation involved in the scandal gave over $500K to the UT Athletic Department over a two year period, but initially they could not find records of that much giving. If someone wrote a $250,000 check to the booster club at most schools, wouldn't they be calling to set up a session for seat selection and other benefits as well as the chance to hit them up for more money?

I understand that the goal was to get the student into the athletic applicant pool instead of the regular applicant pool,.The athletic department did not care if the student showed up for practice since they were getting a huge gift for a non revenue sport. So the plan for the athletic department was to use their ability to admit sub-optimal applicants as a way to fund Olympic sports.

It would be interesting to see how the admissions profile of the athletic admits compare to the regular admit pool. I highly doubt we will ever see that info. I also think it is hilarious how Governor Abbott called for action by Texas state universities when he was the one person who did the most to deep six Regent Wallace Hall's investigation into the admission scandal at UT, both as AG and as Governor.

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tu is the dirtiest and most corrupt member in the NCAA. They are unfortunately bulletproof.

Gyles Marrett said:

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https://www.foxnews.com/sports/ucla-student-had-no-business-playing-for-top-soccer-program-report

Take this one for instance. You have recruiting services rating their signing class for women's soccer at UCLA. They don't catch that one of the signee's in that class has never played soccer?

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No recruiting is more closely watched than college football, and they literally just had a completely make up player ranked by recruiting services. It was obviously very simple for non-revenue coaches who were on the take to hide a "Recruit" for a kickback. The only surprising thing about this whole thing is that rich people were somehow unable to legitimately buy their way in with a donation. Something that is completely legal to this day.

Gonads23 said:

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McInnis80 said:

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I saw that the Foundation involved in the scandal gave over $500K to the UT Athletic Department over a two year period, but initially they could not find records of that much giving. If someone wrote a $250,000 check to the booster club at most schools, wouldn't they be calling to set up a session for seat selection and other benefits as well as the chance to hit them up for more money?

I understand that the goal was to get the student into the athletic applicant pool instead of the regular applicant pool,.The athletic department did not care if the student showed up for practice since they were getting a huge gift for a non revenue sport. So the plan for the athletic department was to use their ability to admit sub-optimal applicants as a way to fund Olympic sports.

It would be interesting to see how the admissions profile of the athletic admits compare to the regular admit pool. I highly doubt we will ever see that info. I also think it is hilarious how Governor Abbott called for action by Texas state universities when he was the one person who did the most to deep six Regent Wallace Hall's investigation into the admission scandal at UT, both as AG and as Governor.

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tu is the dirtiest and most corrupt member in the NCAA. They are unfortunately bulletproof.

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Look I hate tu as much as the next guy but two universities just recently had major scandals where they essentially covered up the rape of women and children, so I think the horns are kind of a long way from being the dirtiest program.

aggie appraiser said:

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Who cares?

The DOJ and FBI were trying to overturn a national election with the help of the media and the IRS was targeting political enemies of the prior president....

...and people get worked up about a flipping dentist killing a lion in africa, a vet killing a cat with an arrow, and rich people bribing people so their kids can go to a better university.

Our goverment is corrupt. Get your priorities straight.

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Can someone on the staff check to see if this post came from Russia?

aggie appraiser said:

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Who cares?

The DOJ and FBI were trying to overturn a national election with the help of the media and the IRS was targeting political enemies of the prior president....

...and people get worked up about a flipping dentist killing a lion in africa, a vet killing a cat with an arrow, and rich people bribing people so their kids can go to a better university.

Our goverment is corrupt. Get your priorities straight.

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To be fair, the whole parents bribing thing is a sight worse than the other two examples you gave.

But I agree. We have some messed up priorities. And our government has always been corrupt. Government is always corrupt.

Seems the big deal with this one operation was small timers were able to buy their way in through one massive organization. These don't appear to be the long time big donors. I'm curious to see if the sub 20 ACT, sub 1100 SAT types that got into tu class of 2023 actually matriculate now. Strange coincidence is there are a handful of these in our current senior class with big donor parents. There is also "a guy" with a claimed 70% success rate who will argue tu decisions for thousands of dollars. I doubt that path will still be open. I heard this from our senior with a friend in that process. I don't know if they started that process before or after the scandal broke. But, now I'm curious about how that will turn out.

This kind of stuff goes on everywhere, moreso in sports than academics. It's human nature. If you aren't cheating, you aren't trying hard enough. Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing. It's not life or death, it's much more important than that.

HECUBUS said:

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Seems the big deal with this one operation was small timers were able to buy their way in through one massive organization. These don't appear to be the long time big donors. I'm curious to see if the sub 20 ACT, sub 1100 SAT types that got into tu class of 2023 actually matriculate now.

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Couple of things these guys I would not call small timers if they are writing 6 figure checks. most of them we ve never heard of but they are wealthy. Personally i dont think there are alot of sub 1100 kids getting in to tu no matter who they are related. Big Donors kids usually go to to good private schools and if they are getting in tu it is the class rank that is the issue not test scores. Big donors will spend several thousand to maximize their kids test scores.

There is a legal way to bribe your way in and illegal way to bribe your way in.

I do realize it goes on everywhere. I happen to know a former athlete at A&M that had no business being on the team of the sport he got a scholarship for after his parents wrote a fat check towards a renovation going on with that sports facility. Was a surprise to all of us that knew them that he got a scholly to A&M.....until we heard about the donation. Needless to say he transferred after his freshman year. Apparently they thought that donation would also mean playing time.

That sort of stuff goes on all the time. It's more from the schools perspective willing to go one step farther than that and classify someone as an athlete that has never been an athlete before lol. Just very ballsy. Was due time before that was blown up.

Remember this guy trying to blow the whistle at tu?

https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/wallace-hall-ponders-deep-in-new-college-admissions-scandal-11644790?fbclid=IwAR3Q61Aj0Fug2aShx-LCz9nHFzHzYu_XNwaV6-i7QtZe1NFxYX3FoFUV2oA

Great article. I blame Abbott for this one. He could have reappointed Wallace Hall as Regent to UT but shut that down. The UT Regents, administration, and Legislature wanted to see this investigation die as quickly as it could. Students with connections to powerful Legislators were admitted to the crown jewel of the UT system, UT Law. People should have gone to jail for this, but now this is conveniently burred.

schwack schwack said:

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Remember this guy trying to blow the whistle at tu?

https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/wallace-hall-ponders-deep-in-new-college-admissions-scandal-11644790?fbclid=IwAR3Q61Aj0Fug2aShx-LCz9nHFzHzYu_XNwaV6-i7QtZe1NFxYX3FoFUV2oA

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Money quote: "
In the cultic worship of an unearned, undeserved prestigious credential, a bought credential, I smell serious rot. It seems to me the whole fabric is fraying in what I thought was supposed to be a meritocratic democracy."

Also interesting take on Perry and his bizarre cultural/ philosophical shift to court the far right.

Football related because that goon might be our next AD. God i hope not though.

I don't see Rick Perry as the AD. President, maybe, but I can't see Perry reporting to Sharpe. I would not read much into the Rick Perry embrace of the Tea Party. He was fighting off a challenge from Kay Bailey Hutchinson, the typical Country Club Republican. He needed their votes and they delivered a huge win over KBH.