Blake Baxter of the College Fix — a student at Eureka College, Ronald Reagan’s alma mater! — reports on a University of Miami corruption scandal.

Alex Collins, one of the top high-school football players in the country, has yet to sign his scholarship letter of intent with his chosen school of Arkansas because his mom ran off with it:

ESPN 150 running back Alex Collins still has not signed his letter of intent with Arkansas. According to two sources familiar with the situation, his mother showed up Wednesday at South Plantation High School, confiscated the documents and left.

Andrea McDonald fled with the paperwork because she doesn’t want Collins to leave home, the sources said. Collins is 18 and does not need a parent or guardian to co-sign his letter of intent.

Per NCAA rules and because he hasn’t received a signed letter of intent, Arkansas coach Bret Bielema, appearing on ESPNU’s broadcast of national signing day, said he could not talk about Collins.

South Plantation athletic director Mike Collins, who is not related to Alex, said later Wednesday that “the family was not on the same page and needed to work things out.”

What makes the story even stranger is that Collins doesn’t live with his mother but with his high-school football coach.

In honor of national signing day, here’s the story of Reuben Foster. Reuben, a highly rated linebacker, was verbally committed to Auburn University only to decommit and verbal to Alabama. The only problem? Reuben has an Auburn tattoo, and he intends to keep it:

The nation’s No. 1 inside linebacker and No. 16 overall recruit in the ESPN 150 announced Monday night that he now plans to attend recently-crowned national champion Alabama. He had previously verbally committed to Alabama two years ago, decommitted last July, gave a verbal to Auburn, and then made a second decommitment in December when former head coach Gene Chizik was fired along with his lead recruiter, Trooper Taylor.

Foster Tweeted in December that he is not getting rid of his Auburn tattoo in support of his cousin, former Auburn player Ladarious Phillips, who was killed in a shooting near campus.

 With all this drama over his tattoo, it’s a good thing he isn’t going to Ohio State.

UT’s situation is not unique. It’s just worse than most:

From the window in Dave Hart’s corner office, the University of Tennessee athletic director can see Neyland Stadium above all else, a fortress along the Tennessee River that instantly identifies the Volunteers as a member of college football’s elite.

Its enormity is a testament to the sport’s incredible growth during the past two decades and the power of the Tennessee brand. It also effectively conceals an athletic department that built enormous debt while trying to maintain its place among the richest and most powerful football programs in the Southeastern Conference.

Now, after staggering to losing football seasons in four of the last five years and seeing attendance drop to levels last seen in the 1970s, the Vols find themselves mired in more than $200 million of debt, the most in the SEC, with reserves of just $1.95 million, the least in the conference.

Oh my. The NCAA has discovered major issues with its investigation into the University of Miami athletic department and is voluntarily launching an immediate “external review” to “ensure operation of the program is consistent with the essential principles of integrity and accountability.” USA Today reports:

The NCAA will launch an external review of its own enforcement program after uncovering an issue of improper conduct during its investigation into the University of Miami, which has come under scrutiny from the NCAA since the release of a Yahoo! Sports report in 2011 that claimed 72 student-athletes received impermissible benefits from 2002-10.

As a result, the NCAA announced Wednesday that it would not move forward with its case against the university until the completion of the external investigation.

According to a release Wednesday from the NCAA, former members of its enforcement program worked with the criminal defense attorney for Nevin Shapiro, the disgraced former booster at the center of the NCAA’s case, to improperly obtain information through a bankruptcy proceeding that did not involve the NCAA.

Since the NCAA does not have subpoena power, members of the enforcement staff gained information through the proceedings they would not have access to otherwise.

Keep in mind rumors were that the NCAA was about to announce what penalties it was ready to impose on the University of Miami, to the point where those involved were issuing preemptive statements from their lawyers. For example, this story on former Miami basketball coach Frank Haith and his ties to the scandal ran yesterday:

The any-day-now waiting game is now months old.

Miami’s official notice of allegations from the NCAA in the Nevin Shapiro recruiting scandal could drop, well, any moment still. Speculation and media reports are on the rise as the day nears.

Pompano Beach attorney Michael Buckner can tell you all about it.

He represents former Miami basketball coach Frank Haith, who’s now at Missouri. Buckner was on a teleconference with co-counsel Monday afternoon when CBSSports.com published a story about his client.

The report stated Haith would be charged with serious allegations for his role in the wide-ranging investigation into Miami’s football and basketball programs.

Buckner was stunned.

He said he had not heard anything from the NCAA about charges. A day later, on Tuesday evening, he still hadn’t heard anything from the NCAA.

And he’s not happy, either.

“Whoever leaked that or communicated that to CBSSportsline is violating the NCAA confidentiality provisions,” Buckner told the Sun Sentinel. “And if the NCAA had made a conclusion, we would have received a notice of allegations already. Based on what we know about the evidence, there should not be any allegations against coach Haith.”

The article states Haith will be hit with serious charges from the NCAA soon. Unethical conduct and failure to promote an atmosphere of compliance on Haith’s part will be the result of the long investigation into that portion of Miami’s athletic department, CBSSports.com reports.

The violations could lead to a three-year show cause penalty that could cost Haith his job at Missouri, the story read.

But today we learn that not only has the Miami investigation been put on hold, but that the entire process itself might have been compromised from the beginning. University president Donna Shalala is not happy:

Since the University first alerted the NCAA to the possibility of violations more than two years ago, we have been cooperative and compliant with the NCAA and, I believe, a model for how institutions should partner with NCAA staff during investigations. In addition to encouraging current and former staff members and student-athletes to cooperate with investigators, we have provided thousands of documents to the enforcement staff.

I am frustrated, disappointed and concerned by President (Mark) Emmert’s announcement today that the integrity of the investigation may have been compromised by the NCAA staff.

As we have done since the beginning, we will continue to work with the NCAA and now with their outside investigator hoping for a swift resolution of the investigation and our case.

Not that CBS Sports — which wrong about Frank Haith above — can really be trusted at this point, but their “sources” now say Shapiro was being “retained” by the NCAA when the alleged improper conduct occurred:

The NCAA improperly retained Nevin Shapiro’s attorney to work on depositions in a federal bankruptcy case in order determine NCAA violations, a source close the case told CBSSports.com. It would be improper for the NCAA would hire the attorney representing the subject of an ongoing investigative process. That attorney is believed to be Marie Elena Perez. It is also thought that the NCAA’s involvement in a federal case that has nothing to do with the government’s interest in that case could be cause for concern for the NCAA.

We’ll see what the next step is, but if I’m Donna Shalala, I’d be getting a legal team together to not only get the entire NCAA case dismissed against the University, but compensation for damages as well.

Today’s front page of the South Bend Tribune. Oh yeah, and the president said something about guns:

It was an online-only girlfriend:

“This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but over an extended period of time, I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online. We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her.

“To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone’s sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating.

“It further pains me that the grief I felt and the sympathies expressed to me at the time of my grandmother’s death in September were in any way deepened by what I believed to be another significant loss in my life.

“I am enormously grateful for the support of my family, friends and Notre Dame fans throughout this year. To think that I shared with them my happiness about my relationship and details that I thought to be true about her just makes me sick. I hope that people can understand how trying and confusing this whole experience has been.

“In retrospect, I obviously should have been much more cautious. If anything good comes of this, I hope it is that others will be far more guarded when they engage with people online than I was.

“Fortunately, I have many wonderful things in my life, and I’m looking forward to putting this painful experience behind me as I focus on preparing for the NFL Draft.”

Turns out Notre Dame was informed of the Manti Te’o girlfriend hoax at the end of December, prior to the BCS National Championship game:

Notre Dame has confirmed the reported death of Manti Te’o’s girlfriend during the football season was a hoax.

According to university spokesman Dennis Brown, “On December 26, Notre Dame coaches were informed by Manti Te’o and his parents that Manti had been the victim of what appears to be a hoax in which someone using the fictitious name Lennay Kekua apparently ingratiated herself with Manti and then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had tragically died of leukemia.

The University immediately initiated an investigation to assist Manti and his family in discovering the motive for and nature of this hoax. While the proper authorities will continue to investigate this troubling matter, this appears to be, at a minimum, a sad and very cruel deception to entertain its perpetrators.”

How can Te’o be a victim of a hoax he helped to perpetuate? For example, here’s the closing paragraph of a NYT piece on Notre Dame’s win over USC:

It was suggested to Te’o that in the shadows of the Hollywood sign, he had produced the perfect script. Not quite, he said. To have his grandmother and girlfriend around to share in the celebration, “would have been a better script,” Te’o said, “but other than that, I don’t think you can write a better one.”

Yeah, this isn’t going away.

Oh my. It seems Notre Dame and its star linebacker have been caught fibbing about his “inspirational” life story. Deadspin has the scoop:

Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax 

Notre Dame’s Manti Te’o, the stories said, played this season under a terrible burden. A Mormon linebacker who led his Catholic school’s football program back to glory, Te’o was whipsawed between personal tragedies along the way. In the span of six hours in September, as Sports Illustrated told it, Te’o learned first of the death of his grandmother, Annette Santiago, and then of the death of his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua.

Kekua, 22 years old, had been in a serious car accident in California, and then had been diagnosed with leukemia. SI’s Pete Thamel described how Te’o would phone her in her hospital room and stay on the line with her as he slept through the night. “Her relatives told him that at her lowest points, as she fought to emerge from a coma, her breathing rate would increase at the sound of his voice,” Thamel wrote.

Upon receiving the news of the two deaths, Te’o went out and led the Fighting Irish to a 20-3 upset of Michigan State, racking up 12 tackles. It was heartbreaking and inspirational. Te’o would appear on ESPN’s College GameDay to talk about the letters Kekua had written him during her illness. He would send a heartfelt letter to the parents of a sick child, discussing his experience with disease and grief. The South Bend Tribune wrote an article describing the young couple’s fairytale meeting—she, a Stanford student; he, a Notre Dame star—after a football game outside Palo Alto.

Did you enjoy the uplifiting story, the tale of a man who responded to adversity by becoming one of the top players of the game? If so, stop reading.

Manti Te’o did lose his grandmother this past fall. Annette Santiago died on Sept. 11, 2012, at the age of 72, according to Social Security Administration records in Nexis. But there is no SSA record there of the death of Lennay Marie Kekua, that day or any other. Her passing, recounted so many times in the national media, produces no obituary or funeral announcement in Nexis, and no mention in the Stanford student newspaper.

Nor is there any report of a severe auto accident involving a Lennay Kekua. Background checks turn up nothing. The Stanford registrar’s office has no record that a Lennay Kekua ever enrolled. There is no record of her birth in the news. Outside of a few Twitter and Instagram accounts, there’s no online evidence that Lennay Kekua ever existed.

The photographs identified as Kekua—in online tributes and on TV news reports—are pictures from the social-media accounts of a 22-year-old California woman who is not named Lennay Kekua. She is not a Stanford graduate; she has not been in a severe car accident; and she does not have leukemia. And she has never met Manti Te’o.

The rest here.

There’s some question if Brent Musburger, fast on the heels of his creepy infatuation with the girlfriend of Alabama’s A. J. McCarron during the BCS National Championship game, called ESPN’s sideline reporter — Holly Rowe — “smokin’” at the conclusion of last night’s Baylor–Kansas basketball game.

Early reporting had Musburger call Rowe “really smokin’ tonight“. . .

“Once again, your final score, Kansas 61, Baylor 44,” Musburger said in the manner he has hundreds of times before. “Coming up next, SportsCenter. For Fran Franschilla and Holly Rowe, who was really smokin’ tonight, I want to say ‘so long from Lawrence.’”

. . . But ESPN has since pushed back declaring Musburger said “it was really smokin’ tonight,” not “who was.”

Here’s the video and I hear “it” as well.

But does that really matter? If Musburger had said a male sideline reporter was “smokin’” tonight, I doubt if anyone would have read anything sexual into it. Yes, Musburger (and the producers in the ESPN truck) were creepy during the National Championship game, but I think the PC word police need to move on with this one.

If you caught last night’s National Championship game, you were treated to Brent Musburger acting very, very creepy toward the girlfriend of A. J. McCarron. ESPN has since apologized:

ESPN has apologized for comments by veteran broadcaster Brent Musburger, who seemed to lose the thread of the BCS championship game when confronted with the loveliness of Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron’s girlfriend Monday .

With ‘Bama quickly asserting itself against Notre Dame, Musburger noted Katherine Webb, a former Miss Alabama, in the stands.

“You quarterbacks, you get all the good looking women,” Musburger, 73, said. “What a beautiful woman.”

“Wow!” his partner, Kirk Herbstreit, said.

“Whoa!” Musburger added.

“A.J’.s doing some things right down in Tuscaloosa,” Herbstreit said.

But this isn’t the first time Mussberger has acted this way. Let’s go to the archives when Mussberger launched the career of Jenn Sterger, then a Florida State student who ended up parlaying Mussberger’s creepiness into a gig with the NY Jets. (And later a sex scandal with Bret Favre):

Brent Musberger tries to inject some life into an otherwise snoozer of a BCS national title game by fawning over University of Alabama QB A. J. McCarron’s girlfriend, Katherine Webb, who also happens to be Miss Alabama USA 2012.  

If Notre Dame had listened to me in 2011 and fired Coach Kelly, last night might have been different. Roll tide. . .

A former Division I football player alleges in a lawsuit against his alma mater that school personnel injected him repeatedly with a generic version of the potent painkiller Toradol without informing him of the potential side effects:

Controversy surrounding the drug has grown this year following claims by former USC lineman Armond Armstead that he suffered a heart attack after the 2010 season, at age 20, following shots of generic Toradol administered over the course of the season by the team doctor and USC personnel.

“I thought, you know, can’t be me, you know? This doesn’t happen to kids like me,” Armstead told ABC News.

The manufacturers’ warning label for generic Toradol (ketorolac tromethamine) says the drug is not intended for prolonged periods or for chronic pain and cites gastrointestinal bleeding and kidney failure as possible side effects of the drug.

In addition, like other drugs in its class, the generic Toradol label warns “may cause an increased risk of serious cardiovascular thrombotic events, myocardial infarction (heart attack), and stroke, which can be fatal.”

“This risk may increase with duration of use,” the so-called black box warning reads.

In a lawsuit against the school and the doctor, Dr. James Tibone, Armstead claims the school ignored the stated risks of the drug and never told him about them.

“He was a race horse, a prize race horse that needed to be on that field no matter what,” said Armstead’s mother Christa. “Whether that was a risk to him or not.”

Armstead says he and many other USC players would receive injections of what was known only as “the shot” in a specific training room before big games and again at half-time.

“No discussion, just go in. He would give the shot and I would be on my way,” Armstead told ABC News.

Armstead said the shot made him feel “super human” despite severe ankle, and later shoulder pain, and that without it, he never could have played in big USC games against Notre Dame and UCLA.

“You can’t feel any pain, you just feel amazing,” the former star player said.

USC declined to comment on Armstead’s claims, or the use of Toradol to treat Trojan players.

An ABC News crew and reporter were ordered off the practice field when they tried to question USC coach Lane Kiffin about the use of the painkiller.

Later at a news conference promoting the Sun Bowl, where USC was defeated earlier this week, Kiffin said he had no idea when or if Toradol was being used on his players, or about its risks.

“Well, if that was the case then, yeah, I did not know that until you told me,” Kiffin said. “You educated me, thank you.” [empashis mine]

A NCAA spokespeson told ABC News that the college-sports governing body “has no such requirement to regulate or even track the use of painkillers.” The article’s authors point out that the NFL, NHL, and NBA permit the use of Toradol but have stringent oversight requirements, whereas a New York Times piece April 2012 portrays MLB’s apparent lack of oversight of the powerful drug.

We’ll see if this goes anywhere as Penn State isn’t party to the actual lawsuit. If I were Governor Corbett, I’d be a little concerned about what other information the NCAA has that they can put out there as well as what the NCAA can ask Penn State for during the discovery process:

The commonwealth will sue the NCAA over the sanctions imposed on Penn State resulting from the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.

Gov. Tom Corbett will announce Wednesday that he is filing a federal lawsuit against the NCAA for its sanctions against Penn State, according to a news release from the Governor’s Office.

Corbett will hold an 11 a.m. news conference Wednesday in the Alumni Fireside Lounge of the Nittany Lion Inn.

The state is acting without the university in preparing the lawsuit. Penn State spokesman David La Torre told the CDT that the university is not aware of the lawsuit.

University trustee Anthony Lubrano also said he didn’t have much information on the lawsuit.

“If true, I’m glad that the governor has finally come to agree with my point of view that the NCAA had no authority to intervene in this matter,” he said Tuesday. “I do wonder why it took him so long to come to that point of view.”

The rest here.

University of South Carolina’s Jadeveon Clowney absolutely blows up Michigan’s Vincent Smith in the Outback Bowl. Apologies to John J. Miller:

Because there are too few examples of good news about athletes. Via Deadspin:

The NCAA allows bowl participants to accept sponsors’ gifts up to $550 in value, and for players competing in Friday’s Russell Athletic Bowl most of that value came in a $470 Best Buy gift card. That’s valuable potential swag for most college kids, but Hokies defensive back Antone Exum—caught up in the spirit of the season, perhaps…

The folks at Yahoo! Sports continue “…we all thought was a prop.”

West Virginia’s Mountaineer mascot is in trouble with the university after using the school-issued musket he totes around during games and appearances to shoot and kill a black bear.

A video of the mascot’s hunting exploits (warning: video is graphic) was placed online and seen by West Virginia officials, who asked him to stop using the weapon. Jonathan Kimble, the 24-year-old who plays West Virginia’s mascot, said hunting with the gun is a mascot tradition.

Kimble was forced to apologize:

“Hunting can be a controversial topic,” Kimble said. “I apologize to any of those who took offense to the video. It definitely wasn’t my intent to offend anybody.”

First of all, nobody in the state of West Virginia has ever thought of the musket as a prop. This is a state where guns outnumber people. For black powder rifles, the only difference between “blank” and “live” is ramming a lead ball & patch down the muzzle. Second, I’m normally not a fan of “I’m sorry you were offended” apologies, but in this case I’ll take it. The only way it would have been better is if Kimble had replied, ”Apologize? For what?”  

AP:

He’s Johnny Best in Football now — and a freshman, at that.

Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel became the first newcomer to win the Heisman Trophy, taking college football’s top individual prize Saturday night after a record-breaking debut.

Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o finished a distant second in the voting and Kansas State quarterback Collin Klein was third. In a Heisman race with two nontraditional candidates, Manziel broke through the class ceiling and kept Te’o from becoming the first purely defensive player to win the award.

’’That barrier’s broken now,’’ Manziel said. ‘’It’s starting to become more of a trend that freshmen are coming in early and that they are ready to play. And they are really just taking the world by storm.’’

None more than the guy they call Johnny Football.

Manziel drew 474 first-place votes and 2,029 points from the panel of media members and former winners. Te’o had 321 first-place votes and 1,706 points and Klein received 60 firsts and 894 points.

’’I have been dreaming about this since I was a kid, running around the backyard pretending I was Doug Flutie, throwing Hail Marys to my dad,’’ he said after hugging his parents and kid sister.

Flutie was one of many Heisman winners standing behind Manziel as he gave his speech on stage at the Best Buy Theater in Times Square.

’’I always wanted to be in a fraternity,’’ Manziel said later. ‘’Now I get to be in the most prestigious one in the entire world.’’

The rest here.

Conference realignment has been, and always will be, about the money:

Of the 120 schools in the NCAA’s Division I Football Bowl Subdivision, only 23 turned a profit before subsidies in fiscal 2011, meaning that the Terps were one of 97 that didn’t. Maryland’s athletic department, however, was paying its own bills until the 2010–11 athletic year. Even though expenses had outpaced revenue by $2 million to $3 million each year from 2006 through 2010, the department was able to cover the shortfall with reserves it had built from the more fruitful years. But in the 2010–11 athletic year, the athletic department depleted those reserves and borrowed from the university to cover a $7.8 million shortfall.

That was when Maryland made two costly coaching changes in its two biggest revenue-producing sports. Maryland fired its popular football coach, alum Ralph Friedgen, after a season in which the ACC honored him as football coach of the year. Then longtime basketball coach Gary Williams, another popular Maryland alum, retired following the 2010–11 season. Both changes rocked the athletic department’s finances. Maryland spent nearly $3 million paying off Friedgen and his staff for the additional year that was left on the coach’s contract. The school also created a high-paying administrative job for Williams that guaranteed him more than $800,000 over the following two years. That was only the start. New football coach Randy Edsall was guaranteed $2 million a year — the going rate for top coaches. Maryland also had to pay Edsall’s former school, Connecticut, $400,000 to cover his buyout.

The Terps are hoping their move to the Big Ten will cover their years of financial mismanagement in the athletic department. Good luck with that.