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re: Didn't know bama's troubled past...
Posted on 12/30/20 at 11:51 am to BamaDude06
Posted on 12/30/20 at 11:51 am to BamaDude06
My understanding of the 2007 Book Troubles was that the school supply/book store had a very ill-suited system for handling the athletic scholarship book vouchers. In Fall 2005 one player figured out he could just get as many books as he wanted because the voucher had no way track back on the classes the player was enrolled in for the semester. He spreads this exploit to some of his friends and eventually a dozen or more students were running the grift. They’d essentially rent or lend out books to people on their voucher. Eventually one of the players took the grift too far and it caused someone in the supply store to go red alert and audit the voucher program.
Considering this started under Shula, I doubt this was an intentional scheme. Dude was too lazy to go through the trouble of having the SUPE store run a scheme for the players. It was ultimately an information systems failure that college kids figured out how to game.
Considering this started under Shula, I doubt this was an intentional scheme. Dude was too lazy to go through the trouble of having the SUPE store run a scheme for the players. It was ultimately an information systems failure that college kids figured out how to game.
This post was edited on 12/30/20 at 12:00 pm
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Posted on 12/30/20 at 12:04 pm to Diego Ricardo
quote:
2007 Book Troubles
I guarantee this was going on everywhere and commonplace among all scholarships with book inclusions.
A large portion of it was a loophole I, myself, backed into on academic scholarships in the mid-90s. My scholarship covered books and classes between 12-18 credit hours. If I dropped a class and returned the book, depending on when I returned the book, I'd get full price or a significant portion back in cash. There was no accountability for it, and no eyeballs raised so long as I stayed a full time student.
I never intentionally signed up for classes with the intention of dropping the class and pocketing the ~100+ bucks for the book. But, I did benefit from dropped classes multiple semesters.
I was not surprised when it came out. I was surprised at Alabama actually being punished for it. Very dumb. It was just the NCAA being pissy, as the Langham and Means events had left them looking dumb.
This post was edited on 12/30/20 at 12:06 pm
Posted on 12/30/20 at 12:14 pm to Diego Ricardo
quote:
My understanding of the 2007 Book Troubles was that the school supply/book store had a very ill-suited system for handling the athletic scholarship book vouchers.
The vast majority of the issue was that athletic scholarships were just supposed to apply to required books, but several classes also have "suggested" books. They system allowed athletes to get books from the suggested list. These were often not much more than pamphlets. Most of our sports got hit with it and most of the athletes didn't know they were doing anything wrong.
Posted on 12/31/20 at 2:08 am to Diego Ricardo
quote:
Eventually one of the players took the grift too far and it caused someone in the supply store to go red alert and audit the voucher program.
The rumor on campus when it happened was the SUPe store worker was dating an athlete doing it and when he broke up with her she blew the whistle as payback.
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