SCOTT JACOBS

Nevin Shapiro was a nobody.  To sports fans that is.  Sure, the papers and news outlets tell us now that he’s some schmo who got caught up in a $930 million ponzi scheme and is serving 20 years in jail for his stupidity and greed.  For all intensive purposes he threw away his life to make money.

He is locked up and can’t wreck havoc on people’s bank accounts or his own from behind bars.  But that isn’t stopping him from sending a massive hurricane down UM’s way, a category 5 that he was the eye of.

If you haven’t heard the story by now the long and short of it is this: Miami’s football team is in enormous trouble.  73 players are alleged to have received improper benefits and payments from Shapiro over almost a decade long span, and the list includes some elite NFL talent such as Andre Johnson and Devin Hester.  Because sports fans love extremism, the word “death penalty,” only bestowed on one college football program ever, is being thrown around calmly and cooly by the media and Shapiro alike.  It’s one sick twisted web of deceit.

And it’s probably happening everywhere to some degree. But let’s turn a blind eye towards the NCAA and their joke of a governing body and let’s hone in on the central figure in the latest college sports scandal sweeping the front pages.  Let’s talk about Nevin Shapiro.

Shapiro was a UM booster and apparently was really good to the players.  He bought them all kinds of things, gave them money, prostitutes, rides on his yachts, even allegedly paid for one player’s abortion.  He was for all intensive purposes, UM’s money pit.  Now we all know you can’t get paid and play college football.  The NCAA has written the rules as such.  So if these allegations are true, Miami just may be screwed.  What irks me about this story though is how Shapiro is ratting out his own decisions, and sitting in prison, he really has nothing to lose.

Think about this: Nevin Shapiro was a power broker.  He played with paper money that wasn’t his, and he used that to develop quite a little South Florida sports circle:

From the Miami Herald, April 4, 2010:

“Shapiro allegedly pocketed about $35 million — enough to finance a voracious gambling habit, a $6 million Miami Beach mansion, and the personal bodyguards that were often spotted with Shapiro, according to court documents and interviews with people who know him.

Days after his arrest in New Jersey, a portrait is emerging of a man who pursued high-profile friends while trying to establish himself as a power broker in South Florida’s sports circles. He spent $400,000 on Miami Heat floor seats, has a student-athlete lounge named after him at the University of Miami, and talked of starting his own sports management firm.

Court papers also describe a man who lost millions gambling on sports and handed out jewelry like cash, often to cover debts toward the end of the alleged scam. Last fall, investors successfully sued to force Shapiro into bankruptcy in an effort — fruitless so far — to collect money from him.”

So you’re this big shot important guy who had a student lounge named after you at a tradition rich football school and you’re hanging out with D-Wade and Shaq, and suddenly the roof caves in and you need that gambling thrill.  But you’re indicted and sent to jail, and all the power and Brad Pitt like resources and connections you had, goes out the window.  Suddenly you’re nothing. A nobody.  A fraud.

The players you paid abandon you, running away as if you had the plague.  Your pride is hurt, those so called relationships that you had with these big name stars, nothing more than a mirage.  You want revenge, but again, you’re sitting in a cell.

Alas, you still have that one powerful tool of disposal at your hands: the truth (or something like it).  It’s not like a prison inmate has to worry about tarnishing their reputation when they’re locked in the slammer for 20 years.

That has to be Shapiro’s logic.  It’s the only thing I can think of.  Shapiro fell and he fell hard, but he’s determined to bring an entire program and possible a whole football team down with him.  Due to his mistakes and poor decisions he made (and no one can convince me he didn’t know what he was doing), Shapiro’s allegations which are now being backed by some former players and being driven home by Yahoo! Sports are so absurdly out of bounds that it could cause the NCAA to completely re-evaluate everything.

It’s as if Shapiro decided, well, you left me in my weakest moment, so I’m going to uncover for all the world to see, how royally I can screw you to the national public.  A man who wanted to help the school and help the team, has gone so far the other way that it’s as if he’s decided that not only do I no longer pledge orange and green, I’m going to leave you bleeding, until your body lies dead and motionless for all the world to see.

How else do you explain so blatantly slapping the rules in the face and then deciding to use those idiotic actions as revenge?  Now look, I’m not abstaining the players from this either: they’re stupid too.  I’m sick of this, ‘they don’t know better argument.’  They watch SportsCenter, they’re aware of what they can and cannot do.  They did it anyways.  Big time stars too.  Whatever, that’s not what I’m focusing on right now.

I’m focusing on the guy who ratted out his wrong-doings to get back in the spotlight.  This is Shapiro’s chance to once again make a name for himself. With this scandal center stage he’s a somebody again.  What he says now matters.  More people know his name than ever before.  He’s aware of this.  He’s doing interviews from prison, and mocking the situation almost like it was an “Oceans Eleven” type setup.  Make no mistake about it this is a well calculated move on Shapiro’s part.  He wants to be a rock-star.  He needs to be in the center of things.  Well, now he is. Again.  It’s a storm far bigger and far scarier than what we’ve seen at USC or Ohio State.  The ramifications could leave UM broken for years.

These are the actions of a man desperate for attention.

It’s hard to blame him.  Clearly Shapiro doesn’t have a conscience and clearly he doesn’t care.

So what if he destroys an entire football program because of problems he himself created?  It’s the chance to be important again that Shapiro relishes.  He’s already damned. It’s not like he can sink much lower.

Might as well take the Canes down with him.

Photo: Getty

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