feedback on an article regarding Miami Hurricanes

How's everyone doing? I'm a college student in South Florida and I wrote an article for my college paper. It's my first article, and I'm just looking for some feedback. Positive or negative, just tell me what you think about it.

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Death to Miami?

As a University of Miami football fan, I personally can’t wait for the day that the Hurricanes are at the peak of college football once again. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen. These past couple of weeks, UM has been plagued by a controversy stirred up by Nevin Shapiro when he admitted to Yahoo! Sports that he had provided benefits to over 72 former and current Miami Hurricanes. The benefits listed include cash, jewelry, prostitutes, entertainment on his multimillion dollar properties, paid trips to high-restaurants and nightclubs from 2002 through 2010 – breaking numerous NCAA rules. Shapiro also stated that he supplied bounties for on-field play that some would even max out to thousands of dollars if they were able to injure opposing players, along with even paying for one former player’s abortion. These allegations come after Shapiro was convicted of playing a part of a $930 million Ponzi scheme, and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The majority of the players named has since moved on to the NFL and have achieved success such as Devin Hester, Andre Johnson, and Vince Wilfork. When a few of these players were questioned about it, the majority of them just waved it off and made it clear, they will pay no mind to it. So it’s quite safe to say that they won’t be paying any fines or receiving any suspensions since they are now longer in college. We can’t say that about the current Hurricane players who are under investigation by the NCAA.

Players such as Jacory Harris, Sean Spence, Marcus Forston, and Ray Ray Armstrong are under investigation and if they are ruled ineligible by the NCAA then they possibly won’t be able to play this season. Did I mention that these four players are starters and key players to the team? The sad thing is, it’s not just these four. The Canes have over twelve current starters that have been named by Shapiro. Like I said earlier, it doesn’t seem likely for the Canes to be on top soon.

Records of Shapiro’s phone bills, bank statements, and over thousands of photos seem to support his claims and indeed prove what Shapiro said is true. So does this mean that the NCAA might penalize the Hurricanes football program? Yes. Now what might the NCAA come up with as a fair punishment? Besides the players being suspended, we can almost certainly count that they will vacate past wins and championships if they rule former players ineligible just as they have done in the past such as when Reggie Bush lost his Heisman trophy.

The idea of a “death penalty” to the football program has also been mentioned, which hasn’t happened to any collegiate team since the SMU football program shut down in the 80s. So will it happen to the University of Miami? In the past year, many college football players have been caught or suspected of breaking NCAA rules. It’s possible that the NCAA might want to make an example of the Hurricanes as a whole program since they don’t’ seem to have a standard on what is worthy of the death penalty.

Worst case scenario for the Hurricanes? Program shut down for a year. Football scholarships limited, players ruled ineligible, championship probation and Miami will be forced to rebuild. As a supporter of the team and program, I just wish the program is able to move forward from this. Forgive and forget.

 

This is really a column. As a student, you should stick with straight news for a while.

 

It's not really a column, either. This story straddles strange land between opinion and news, since it is neither.

To make this worth reading, either take a stance that won't waste the reader's time or write something newsworthy. Everything you've written, we already know. You're just picking from the Yahoo story and repeating in your own words. And you identify yourself as a Miami fan, which takes the starch out of the entire idea. A Miami fan hopes Miami returns to prominence? Shocker.

I'd agree with the above opinion. Iron out your style in news and then return to columns.