Football's Dirtiest Programs: #7, Washington

What's the most you've ever won in your March Madness office pool? Fifty bucks? A few hundred? As a result of his participation in pools and auctions from 2000-2004, former Washington coach Rick Neuheisel walked away with a payday topping $4 million. More on that in a moment.

Washington is the first of the programs we've covered to get hit with two violations in the last 20 years and having read the circumstances surrounding both violations, I have to say that these might be two of the most trumped-up violations we run across. The NCAA Committee on Infractions filed reports in 1994 and 2004 on the Huskies. The 1994 violations involved improper benefits and the 2004 report detailed Neuheisel's love of college basketball.

In April of 2002 a "confidential" informant blew the whistle on the veritable den of iniquity that was the Washington Huskies' football office. Gambling on the NCAA basketball tournament was rampant with people shelling out three, sometimes five, whole dollars to get in on the action. These deep pockets came from all over the athletics department: trainers, assistant coaches, football staffers, and even the head football coach himself. It had finally gone too far, though, when Neuheisel got involved with an NCAA tournament auction in which he paid over $3,500 and received over $10,000.

"But wait," you're probably asking, "that doesn't sound like anything near $4 million."

You're right. You see, Neuheisel chose to be less than forthcoming with the NCAA's investigatory staff. This lack of candor is what led the Committee on Infractions to make such a big deal out of those trivial office pools, and it also resulted in Washington showing him the door. He sued the NCAA and Washington for wrongful termination and that case reached a settlement in 2005 that provided Neuheisel with his massive payday. While it took a while for him to realize his winnings, it might have been the most lucrative series of NCAA tournament pools ever. (It's also worth noting that the settlement was reached largely on account of the NCAA failing to produce documents that they should have.)

I get the impression that, had Neuheisel been up-front with the NCAA, this would've probably been written off as a minor infraction. No such luck, though. The huskies were dinged for "failure to monitor" and given two years of probation in the 2004 report.

The incidents covered in the 1994 report were more worthy of the NCAA's time, although (like the 2004 violation) the punishments were, in large part, levied upon people who had nothing to do with the infractions. In fact, the NCAA comes right out and says "[n]o members of the university's coaching or athletics administration staff are named in a finding of a violation."

The long and the short of the 1994 violations is this: several boosters gave extra benefits here and there to student athletes and prospective student athletes. Washington didn't know about them and, for the most part, the NCAA didn't seem to think there was any reason they should have.

The worst of the violations involved a booster with a real estate development company who, over the course of nine years, paid a "substantial number" of players for work they didn't do. The NCAA estimates the total payout to be over $30,000. Other incidents of overpayment involved to prospective student athletes making 20% more than their non-athlete co-workers at a golf course (overpayment which came to around $400 a summer per player).

There were also other assorted nit-picky violations tossed into the report for good measure, including hotels giving prospective student athletes "extra amenities" and a booster asking (with no other inducement) a prospective student athlete to change his verbal commitment to Washington.

As a result of all of these infractions, the NCAA gave Washington two years of probation, a two-year post-season ban, restricted Washington's TV appearances for a year, and yanked 20 scholarships from them over two years.

Scoreboard:

• Failure to monitor: 2004 (10 points)
• Lack of Institutional Control: 1994 (10 points)
• Probation: 4 years total (8 points)
• Post-season ban: 1994, 2 years (6 points)
• Television ban: 1994, 1 year (3 points)
• Initial scholarships: 1994, 20 (10 points)
• Total: 47.00 points (1994: 33 points, 2004: 14 points)