NCAA Football

Football's Dirtiest Programs: #8, Auburn

Posted Jul 24, 2007 9:00AM By Pete Holiday (RSS feed)

Filed Under: Auburn Football, SEC, The Word

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Using its own calculus, FanHouse ranks the 10 Dirtiest Programs of the last 20 years.

Mike Freeman, the columnist whose article served as the inspiration for this series, amazed on-lookers when he did what few realized was possible: simultaneously pissing off both Alabama and Auburn fans. For its part, the Loveliest Villiage on the Plains had its hackles raised by a number two ranking in Freeman's poll. It turns out that while they're no angels, the Auburn Tigers are not quite #2 material.

It is unusual that infractions in diverse sports can be blamed on the head football coach, but in this case the NCAA is very clear in its 1993 report that those violations and the ones covered by the 1991 report (which included only the men's basketball and tennis programs and, therefore, are not being scored here) fell on the shoulders of Pat Dye who served as both head coach and Athletics Director from 1981 to 1992.Sorry, No Photos

As major infractions go, and aside from the Committee on Infractions' admonitions regarding allowing one person to serve as head football coach and Athletics Director, this was a pretty boring case. It primarily centered around money flowing to players which should not have been flowing to players.

One player received over $4,000 from a booster, much of it in cash, during his time in Auburn. The booster also bought new tires for the player's car, made car payments on his behalf, and setup a "bonus system" for his final season which netted him $700 in cash for big hits, interceptions, and the like. This description from the report of one of the incidents between this player and this booster is somewhat amusing:

In the spring of 1991, following the completion of the young man's eligibility, the representative visited the student-athlete's trailer home and placed at least $250 in cash inside a trailer apartment sign. Thereafter, the representative telephoned the student-athlete and instructed the young man to look behind the trailer sign for the cash.

This wasn't an isolated relationship, though. There are reports of assistant coaches serving as go-betweens for boosters and players. An administrative assistant was found to have provided "financial assistance" to a player in the form of hundreds of dollars a month to help him with his car payments and rent. Dye himself even got into the act, having a talk with a branch manager at a bank and urging him to reconsider turning down one of his players for a loan. That branch manager made loans to five other athletes over a span of six years.

In fact, the impermissible loans were Dye's solution to the tricky problem of players being unable to sign with agents. He referred at least three student athletes to that branch manager for unsecured loans that were granted upon the basis of the athletes future professional earnings. Again, we're not here to quibble about whether or not this sort of thing should be against the rules, but it was, Dye knew that it was, and he recommended it anyway.

Two appearances before the Committee on Infractions in as many years would normally cause for great concern, but the NCAA purportedly went easy on Auburn because most of these violations occurred before the sanctions were handed down in the 1991 case. The Tigers wound up with two years of probation and post-season ban. A year's worth of TV ban, and some scholarships. In addition, the university self-imposed a separation of duties with respect to the Athletic Director and the head football coach.

Scoreboard:
  • Unethical Conduct (5 points)
  • Lack of Institutional Control (10 points)
  • Probation: 2 years (4 points)
  • Post-season ban: 2 years (6 points)
  • Television ban: 1 year (3 points)
  • Initial scholarships: 33 (16.5 points)
  • Scholarship cap reduction: 6 (1.5 points)
  • TOTAL: 46.00 points
As a single violation, this is the second third worst of the last two decades. (Updated: Oops. Third, not second)
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Tags: Cheaters, Infractions, Pat+Dye, PatDye, TenDirtiestNCAAFBPrograms

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