He did solicit the money, that part’s not even in question anymore. The official “Cam Newton apologists” line is that Cecil may have been soliciting money, but no money ever changed hands and Cam didn’t know. Suuuure.
Based on an SDMB poll I asked recently, my conclusions are:
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It won’t matter if there’s any truth to be learned, people won’t tend to believe it.
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There’s a bunch of hate for Auburn.
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There’s precious little else to discuss about college football.
Well, be fair. In this situation, we have the perfect storm. If true, it could be the biggest scandal in the history of college football. The player involved is the leader of a team contending for a national title, AND the Heisman Trophy frontrunner.
There’s almost no way it could be a bigger story.
As far as truth goes, even the most Dye-hard Auburn fan has got to be thinking by this point that maybe something really is smelling fishy. I mean, right?
Your number 2 may be true, but 1 and 3 are both nonsense.
First, there’s already been a lot of “truth” discovered. We’ve gone from thinking maybe this was just some jilted coaches from a rival school throwing dirt, to knowing that yes, there was some impropriety here. Now it’s just a question of how deep it goes.
Second, there’s plenty to discuss in college football, but this story is huge and sprawling. It touches on everything from dirty recruiting, public corruption, academic scandals, gambling, the FBI, and so on. Who knows where it’s going to end.
One area of speculation that now seems to be receiving strong support is that Auburn knows it has a huge problem - big enough to land it in bad trouble with the NCAA. In fact it’s bad enough that their view is “Well boys, we’re going down - but the NCAA moves slowly on these things. So we might as well go down in a blaze of glory, with a national championship and a Heisman trophy.”
If this proves to be the case, the result will likely be the ‘death penalty’ - if the NCAA stops short of that, they’ll look like impotent fools.
That’s kind of where I think this is headed too. However, the NCAA has pretty much said in the past that it made a mistake with SMU and wouldn’t lower that kind of boom again. That led not only to the utter destruction of the SMU football program, but to the demise of the SWC, and probably still plays a role in current conference instability.
Then again, if the rumors about what was going on at Auburn are true, then something like the death penalty is really the only appropriate solution.
No way Auburn gets the death penalty, no way. The last time the NCAA did that with a major football team, it didn’t just wreck the team for decades (SMU), it ended up splitting up the entire Southwest Conference. The potential fallout for the SEC is enormous; the commissioner would surely step in before that happened, and in any case the NCAA will be keen not to let things get to that stage.
If that’s what Auburn is indeed trying to do, the NCAA will hobble them for years with bowl bans and scholarship cuts. But I don’t think after the SMU experience that the NCAA will ever put the death penalty on a major football program.
The questions regarding AUburn is simple: What did they know annd when did they know it? AS far as I can tell, at the moment there is only the implication that Cam’s dad asked for money from Miss St. There is nothing, that we know of, that says Auburn gave money to CAm, his father or that they were even asked for money. However, Miss St did let the SEC know a while ago (didn’ they) that something was afoot. So what did Auburn know and when?
The SWC was doomed anyway - there’s no way a single state, even Texas, can support a major college football conference.
The idea that the school should punish the player is utterly ridiculous though.
Well, we do know one of the Miss State recruiters said Cam told them he was going to Auburn because “the money was too good.”
The problem here isn’t with the NCAA, it’s with the academic side. If Auburn loses accredidation, they’re toast. The SEC will have to expel them and then it’s a free-for-all. If this case turns out to be true, it will finally prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the NCAA is completely incompetent at policing college football. I wouldn’t be surprised to have Congress stepping in at that point.*
*I’m not saying that’s a good thing, just that I wouldn’t be surprised to see it happen.
Is Auburn that shitty of a school?
Ranked #81 by US News and World Reports (one spot behind their in state rival Alabama). Tier 1 university.
Not that I’m aware of. I think their actual academics are fine - although there are rumors that AU athletes don’t even bother attending class and yet still pass*. But accreditation covers lots more than just the classroom.
The accrediting body (the SACS) has already but Auburn on probation once. The only penalty they have that is more severe is to pull accreditation. I suppose they could just put them on probation again…
As I understand it, the issues that led to the original probation were exactly the kinds of things that lead to the University President being able to be overridden by staff, Trustees, and boosters. If those kinds of shenanigans are still going on (and can be proven), then Auburn may be in DEEP doo-doo.
- Note that this rumor is also batted around about pretty much every major athletic program, so to hear it about Auburn is not only not surprising, but hardly dispositive that the program is corrupt.
No. Absolutely not. I’m an admitted Alabama homer, but I have to admit, on a professional level, that Auburn is NOT a shitty school. They have several world-class academic programs.
The past tense of lead is led.
Which would be relevant if I had been speaking in the past tense. The overruling of the President by others is current and on-going.
Why did Cam leave Florida in the first place? Before all of this broke they said it was because he found out that Tebow was coming back for another year. But why go to a JuCo for a year instead of playing backup at Florida for a year?
Why did Cam choose Auburn over MSU when he had a relationship with Mullen? I suspect that, at the very least, it’s because MSU saw him as tained the minute money was solicited, and didn’t want to risk the repurcussions when it came out that money was asked for. (At the most, of course, it’s because Auburn paid more.)
Can we all agree now that, morality aside, Newton would have been worth every penny his father allegedly asked for?