2010 Auburn took away all fear of the NCAA

In 2010, Scam Newton and the Auburn Tigers won the NCAA championship. They did this while playing, by the NCAA's very own rule book, an ineligible player. Instead of cooperating with the NCAA investigation into Newton and his pastor father, Auburn lawyered up with the Birmingham firm Lightfoot, Franklin, & White, LLC. Auburn spent over two million dollars in having the firm successfully defend Newton and the university. The immediate reward was a national title (as well as a new roof on a, "ahem", condemned church owned by one Mr. Cecil Newton, among other things). The long term ramifications? The NCAA was exposed as having no teeth anymore if a university lawyers up. Recruiting is back to being like the Wild, Wild West; full of hired guns. The inner workings of college football recruiting are reaching levels of illegality beyond what many would ever dream was really occurring at alleged institutions of higher learning.