This investigation is for all the Tostitos

The Weedeater Bowl goes straight to the top!

 

Task-force member Wright Waters, the Sun Belt Conference commissioner, told The Republic that for much of the past decade he attended Fiesta Frolic but that he only began paying for his own accommodations in 2006. He said there was nothing wrong with accepting free golf and gifts from Nike, which attended the event and gave away T-shirts and shoes to participants.

"When you are dealing with a round of golf or T-shirt or something like that, it doesn't influence anyone who cares about college football as deeply as we care about it," Waters said.

That story is fucking beautiful.

 

I'd like to find out how much the charities that are supposed to benefit from these games received, and I'm surprised none of the politicians involved have returned the illegal contributions or at least contributed the same amount to the charities that were cheated out of the money. This stuff makes the United Way scandal look like child's play.
The odd thing is, especially with BCS bowls, its not like you have to beg schools to play, or even need to bother to "scout" teams.
Back in the old days, when deals were getting cut in October and there were only eight to 10 bowls, I could see this kind of thing. But now?

 

Old habits die hard ... unless you want to make absolutely sure the fifth-place team in the ACC will show up to play the fifth-place team in the Big (fill in number).

 

The most troublesome thing to me, and the reason I think the Fiesta could be in real deep doo doo, is that even after the Republic called the bowl out on the contributions, the bowl conducted a slip-shod investigation, paid off the guy who helped make it slip-shod, and then the board signed off on it.
The latest report is thorough, but I'm thinking it might be too little, too late.

 

Not all that surpised. All these bowls are corrupt as hell. So if this is what it takes to get rid of one of them (or more), I guess that's the silver lining.

 

I'm sure the Cotton Bowl's TV deal with Fox has an out clause. If not ... well, that's a good problem to have.

 

I'm sure Jerry is planning a golf outing as I type.

 

Nah, the Fiesta Bowl ain't going anywheres. The NCAA will take it out on the Insight.com Bowl.

 

That's a good point. Junker has two, sometimes three bowls he has to organize a year. So really he's only making about $300k a bowl. Cut all the extravagant spending in half and it's really not that bad.

 

Well, well, well, looks like 9 of the 11 NCAA subcommittee people who are supposed to be investigating the Fiesta Bowl attended ... wait for it ... a junket with free meals, resort rooms and golf outings:

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=6425741

Yeah, this thing is more fixed than a boxing bout in which has both fighters working for Don King. The one thing that I found really interesting though, was this quote from Nick Caparelli, the chairman of the committee:

"Those types of things are typical in any kind of business. I don't see those being a conflict of interest in any way for our committee members."

Um, did I just hear him say ... "business"? I thought the NCAA was a non-profit, supposedly devoted to the purity of amateur athletics. I'd think that someone in Congress might be interested to hear this NCAA guy call his organization ... a "business".

 

None. But they will be $1 million lighter in the pocket (money to go to the very Arizona youth programs the bowl was supposed to be supporting in the first place).
ttp://www.azcentral.com/sports/articles/2011/05/11/20110511fiesta-bowl-bcs.html

Imagine the Fiesta Bowl probably had the goods on what other bowls were doing as well. The junkets FOR the BCS people and only the BCS people would be the ones I would want to be on.