One by one, the e-mails started popping up this week in very important inboxes at very big schools. At Southern California, at Florida, at Texas. At every university that belongs to a Bowl Championship Series conference, in fact.
"Our new service is designed to assist clients who understand the consequences of relying on perfunctory certifications of high-profile prospects," it read.
Huh?
Here's the interpretation: Your school can't properly research a prospective student-athlete's background. We can.
In the wake of allegations that another high-profile college athlete might have been on the take, the sanctity of amateurism is again left bruised and battered. If anyone still isn't convinced college sports is really big business, listen to how Michael Buckner, a Florida attorney and private investigator, explained why his firm sent those e-mails earlier this week.
In business, before any acquisition, agreement or major transaction is complete, due diligence is performed to make sure every party is sound and upstanding. We're talking background checks, chasing money trails, combing through criminal records, researching relationships. It's all standard practice.
"In the corporate world, this is not a big deal. It's just how you do business," Buckner said. "And in many corporate cases dealing with due diligence, you're talking about a lot less money [than college athletics]."
It's hardly a news flash that the purity of revenue-producing sports is wobbling on a tight rope. This is an era in which we barely think twice when a college coach offers a scholarship to a middle school athlete or when a film crew shadows a California sophomore to document the hoop prodigy's life.
But what is new is someone from the private sector offering to police these hot prospects before they set foot on campus.
I say it's sad.
Buckner says it's a natural evolution.
Buckner attended USC as an undergraduate and is a fan of Trojans sports, which means he has followed with special interest the news reports surrounding Reggie Bush and, more recently, O.J. Mayo, two college stars accused of pocketing cash and goods before embarking on professional careers.
"I was disappointed and frustrated," Buckner said. "We're already going through the Reggie Bush investigation, and now we have this Mayo case on top of that? What was running through my head was: There has to be something a university could do, a resource they could acquire to protect the institution against allegations by the NCAA later on."
