The U made a deal with the devil, now it's time to pay up?

Photo from Yahoo Sports
 Nevin Shapiro with Kellen Winslow, Jr.

Money!  Power! Influence! Poppin Bottles!  Cars!  Hookers!  Ponzi Schemes!  "Renegade Booster"! The U! Nope, this is not 1989...

Let's face it, The U (University of Miami Hurricanes) has always had a seedy reputation. (Seedy because everyone wanted to look at those guys as "the bad guys"...let's just be real.) Back  in the day, as seen on ESPN's 30 for 30, The U was the University of loud talking, cocky, go hard all day and all night dudes from the "wrong side of the tracks".  And that made The U infamous!  And the football program made the University of Miami a whole lot of money!

Shoot, I remember my own Cross Colours (I know y'all remember that clothing line...If not check out this TLC vid. lol) ensemble in The U's signature colors Green, Orange and White, with sneakers to match. 

Anyway, surely I digress.  Back to The U and Nevine Shapiro.  Shapiro was ALLEGEDLY a South Florida play boy who got his jollies by giving money to and buying hookers for players on The U's football team from 2002 to the point of his arrest for running ponzi schemes.  And he claims he was only trying to "help". (How exactly do you help people by providing hookers and jewelry? How about tutors, tuition, books? I'm saying...)

(Besides prostitution being "illegal" in Florida, even though they allow strip clubs in residential areas...I actually saw a little girl walk past a strip club on the main strip in Miami once.  She was eating an ice cream cone, while a stripper was outside in a g-string and pasties dancing on the lap of some dude... WOW!) The only thing that makes what Shapiro did "shady" is the fact that these guys played college football.

Had they just been regular college students, there would not be a problem.  Let's be honest.  Guys in college do all of these things.  Heck, guys out of college do all of these things.  But, because these are "student" athletes, they have certain arbitrary restrictions.

These universities make big money off of these "student" athletes, but the NCAA does not care about the athletes, it seems.  They care about "image".  Really?! IMAGE? Please.  You go pick a kid up out of certain communities.  ALLOW grown men to have access to them.  Lavish them with gifts (everyone knows this happens), and pour money into the schools.  Basically, you use these kids as whores, and the schools pimp them.  Then you do not punish the agents. You do not punish the boosters.  You punish other athletes (by sanctioning the school), you punish the student athletes (let's just face it you do not care much about them being students...), you punish the alums, you punish everyone except the perpetrators.

The SYSTEM (I'm not speaking on individuals...because there are admins and coaches who actually care) does not care about these "student" athletes.  It is all about the bottom line.  Let's be real. 

Beware of Trojan "gift" horses.  He's grinning at you from one end and ready to drop kick you at the drop of a dime.  Dudes like Shapiro are unscrupulous, demented people.  He didn't have the natural ability to be as athletic or popular as the young guys he hung around, so he used his shiesty ways to get close to their prowess.  Their prowess became an extension of his. 

Trust and believe this guy was not doing this out of the kindness of his heart.  Get out of here! He was a groupie.  That's it.  And he used his groupie desires to get into a system that brought with it everything he couldn't get on his own.  So to all "student" athletes, beware of dudes trying to lavish you with gifts...trust me, it is not a gift.  He wants something. And that something comes with a big price for you.