There was a big scandal a few years ago when a secretary at the University of Minnesota revealed that she had been ordered by coaches to write papers (more than 100) for basketball stars. Now the former basketball coach has been ordered by a court to return $815,000 of his $1.5 million severance pay, since he lied about his role in the situation.
Another really swell altruistic episode brought to us by those paragons of higher education, the not-for-profit, public universities. If the university's athletics programs are not entire self-sustaining, then tax payers had to pay off Haskins. Some of the loot should go to Jan Gangelhoff, the person who wrote more than 400 term papers. Can you imagine how hard it was to write that many papers just good enough to pass and just dumb enough to avoid scrutiny? Heckuva tightrope to walk. Haskins gets 11 years to pay it back. (Probably without interest.) Given a 5% cost of money figure, the present value on that cash is more like $340,000. His attorney says this arrangement will make it easier to raise the cash. I'll say. (Except Haskins has been barred from his chosen profession, coaching college basketball, until 2007.)
There is also the sad case of Dexter Manley, the former Washington Redskins football star who spent 4 years at Oklahoma State and couldn't even read a children's book. Bruce
The guy violates every rule in both the university's and the NCAA's book. For that, he gets a severance deal of $1.5 million. Subtract the $815K, and he nets $685,000. Even if you subtract the money that was termed "deferred compensation", he still nets $260,000 of taxpayer's funds, simply in "contract buyout". Why would a guy who violates his contract be entitled to having the unpaid portion bought out? Unless, of course, his actions had been approved by his superiors.
