Opinion: LSU booster scandal barely registering blip on radar is sign of times

Dan Wolken | USA TODAY

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NEW ORLEANS -- We probably should have known this LSU football team was destined for greatness last August with the explosive revelation that an LSU booster named John Paul Funes had pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $800,000 dollars from a hospital charitable foundation, including gift cards meant for cancer patients.

Among the reasons Funes got caught? He had directed $180,000 of the foundation’s money to the father of Vadal Alexander, an LSU offensive lineman at the time, as part of a scheme to make it appear as though the father was working for the foundation. He had also flown friends and family to LSU games on the foundation's dime, trips that were logged as "outbound patient transports.”

At his sentencing in October that month, Funes apologized for his "awful and senseless" crimes,” according to The Advocate of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In December, he reported to a federal prison in Indiana for a 33-month sentence. His final Tweet before going to jail came a few days after LSU’s win over Alabama, when he quoted sportscaster Rich Eisen from an interview with LSU coach Ed Orgeron: “Man, we're all just paying rent in your world right now.”

On Monday, the Tigers he loved so much he almost certainly broke NCAA rules to help will play Clemson for the national championship. Hey, if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.

All these months later, the Funes story has all but disappeared from the public consciousness, if it was even there to begin with. Though the embezzlement revelation was a big deal in Baton Rouge, it barely registered nationally: Just another rogue college football booster doing what needs to be done, another NCAA investigation that fades to the background for months on end, another unintended consequence of amateurism that will be shrugged off as an outlier rather than a systemic issue.

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In fact, if the confetti falls on LSU Monday night, no one is going to know or care that the school has spent much of the past year being looked at by the NCAA enforcement staff in both football and men’s basketball as a result of both the Funes case and FBI wiretapped phone calls between hoops coach Will Wade and the middleman for a sport’s agent. During LSU’s run to the SEC title and the College Football Playoff, it hasn’t even been brought up once.

The point in reviving it in this column today isn’t to poke at LSU. When the story became public, the school said it was notified of the potential compliance issue in late 2018, reported it to the NCAA and will “continue to monitor the matter.” We'll take them at their word that they're determined to get to the bottom of what happened and will accept whatever penalties the NCAA levies (assuming they're not too harsh, of course).

But shouldn’t it alarm someone at the NCAA that stories of blatant cheating are no longer viewed as particularly scandalous or problematic, that they now appear and then disappear into the ether in less than a news cycle?

If a booster stealing from a cancer charity to pay off the father of a starting offensive lineman doesn’t move the needle anymore, maybe it’s time to find a new rulebook.

Again, that’s not to suggest that this current LSU team should bear the stain of this apparent scandal. Alexander's last season at LSU was 2015, the same season Orgeron arrived as defensive line coach under Les Miles and a year before he was named the head coach on a permanent basis.

But there was a time in college sports not too long ago when Ohio State players exchanging memorabilia for tattoos or Miami (Fla.) players partying with a Ponzi schemer or Heisman Trophy candidates selling autographs was tantamount to a national emergency.

Now, we have evidence of a booster whose public Twitter account includes extensive interaction with him and LSU personnel (including pictures of Alexander on a hospital visit to see sick children) tied to illicit payments to a football player’s father and we just shrug?

Hey, maybe it’s better this way. Beginning with Jerry Sandusky’s arrest on Nov. 5, 2011 for sexually abusing boys including incidents in the Penn State football, the public perception of what constitutes a real scandal in college sports has changed dramatically. Since then, we’ve only seen more scandals around sexual violence and athletics at places like Baylor and Michigan State.

Relatively speaking, garden-variety amateurism violations no longer seem like a big deal. And with state legislatures bearing down on the NCAA to allow college athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness, we may even end up in a place where boosters funneling money through corporations will all be done in the light of day.

At the same time, what Funes did is criminal, and the fact his relationship to LSU football has fallen completely off the map is almost mind-boggling with the Tigers being on the national stage all season. For decades in college recruiting circles, there have been legends about the complex ways that boosters funnel money to recruits, including charitable foundations. Now here’s evidence of it!

And that should raise a lot of questions. Among them: Did Funes act alone or was someone at LSU helping him? How did he develop a relationship with players in the first place? Is he now cooperating with the NCAA? For what it’s worth, Funes’ attorney Walt Green declined comment. In the meantime, we’ll just have to wait for when — or even if — the NCAA penalizes LSU. For now, there’s something much more important happening Monday night here in New Orleans. Hopefully somewhere behind bars in Indiana, Funes will be allowed to watch.