Wisconsin’s Connection To The Miami Scandal: The Woman Who Helped Build Wisconsin Athletics

With the rapid flow of information in this internet age, if you haven’t heard about the scandal which looks to tear the athletic department of the University of Miami down to the ground, you probably live under a rock. Former Miami booster and owner of the Napoleon Complex to end all Napoleon Complexes Nevin Shapiro revealed to Yahoo! Sports his extensive history of illicit donations to players and the university, breaking multiple NCAA rules. The result could potentially be the first instance of the NCAA “death penalty” since Southern Methodist University’s football program was shut down for two seasons in the late 1980s. SMU, a Southwestern Conference power at the time, reached and won it’s first bowl game since the death penalty in 2009, 20 years after the program restarted.

Predictably, Shapiro blames much of his conduct on the enabling nature of the university and college sports culture in general. From Charles Robinson’s report for Y!:

"He had also donated $50,000 to the basketball program in 2008, complete with a photo that Shapiro says summed up the entire problem at the university. In a snapshot from that day, Shapiro is talking into a microphone, with Haith – a coach the booster allegedly helped to buy a recruit – looking on and smiling. In the background, University of Miami president Donna Shalala is grinning at the check Shapiro had just donated, a $50,000 contribution that he now admits was Ponzi money.“That’s the whole problem right there,” Shapiro said of the picture. “Let’s not kid ourselves. The whole time I was out there rocking and rolling, they were just waiting for the big check to come. And you know what? If I wasn’t sitting in jail right now, they probably would have gotten it, too.”"

Observe, the picture in question:

Circled in red is one of the bit players from the story, as mentioned, University of Miami president Donna Shalala.

She is the woman who laid the foundation for Wisconsin Athletics as they are today.

Rewind to the pre-Barry Alvarez days. The dark ages of Wisconsin football. After reaching the Rose Bowl in 1962, the Badgers failed to win more than five games in a season again until 1981. Then, after four seven-win seasons and three bowl appearances, the Badgers slipped back into incompetence. In the three seasons prior to the hiring of Alvarez, the Badgers won all of six games, with only three coming in Big Ten conference play. Wisconsin had its reputation as an academic school, but the appeal from athletics the school currently holds was nowhere to be seen.

Enter Donna Shalala. The former president of Hunter College and future member of Bill Clinton’s presidential cabinet would serve as the University of Wisconsin chancellor from 1988 to 1993. Although some of her policies were dubious at best — for example, a speech code for faculty which was finally repealed in 1999 — the current prosperous era of athletics can be traced to Shalala’s aggressive pursuance of Pat Richter to head the athletic department back in 1989.

Granted, Shalala’s involvement in the decisions of the athletic programs was secondary to those of Richter and his staff after this one decision, but dominoes quickly began to fall. Richter then aggressively pursued Barry Alvarez, a man with no prior head coaching experience but who had distinguished himself as the defensive coordinator at Notre Dame. In 1989, the year prior to Alvarez’s arrival in Madison, the Fighting Irish defense held opponents to a mere 14.5 points per game, the ninth best mark in the nation.

Although Alvarez struggled through his first three seasons, the Badgers would go on to win the first of three Rose Bowls under Alvarez in 1994, and the rest is history. An era of success unseen in Wisconsin sports history has followed. Although Shalala left for Clinton’s cabinet in 1993, her hires and her hires’ hires have produced in football: four Rose Bowl appearances (including the three Rose Bowl wins), an equal number of Big Ten titles, 16 overall bowl appearances, 10 bowl victories, and five top-10 finishes in the AP rankings. In basketball: 15 NCAA tournament appearances, five Sweet Sixteens, two Elite Eights, a Final Four, three Big Ten regular season titles, and two Big Ten conference tournament titles. In hockey: two National Championships (and three for the women’s team), two WCHA regular season championships, four WCHA tournament championships, and three Frozen Four appearances.

That’s a body of work anybody can be proud of. And Wisconsin still stands as an excellent academic institution to boot.

But Shalala’s reputation will be in jeopardy now, due to her involvement, however minor, in the Shapiro scandal. Shalala has, of course, said all the right things about the scandal; she is “upset, disheartened, and saddened,” she regards the allegations “with the utmost of seriousness,” etc., etc.

As Andy Hutchins said at SB Nation, Shapiro’s proximity to the program and even proximity to Shalala herself will make it tough for her to distance herself from the scandal:

"Shalala has been Miami’s president since 2001, making her the only president at the helm of the university during the years Shapiro allegedly gave thousands of impermissible benefits to scores of Hurricanes players. And Shalala appeared with Shapiro for at least one fund-raiser at a Miami bowling alley, as evidenced by a picture Yahoo! Sports obtained from Shapiro.It’s not hard to believe that Donna Shalala regards these allegations with “the utmost of seriousness.” But it is hard to believe that she didn’t know of them before they were allegations that sparked an NCAA investigation."

Especially given Shalala’s clear commitment to athletics both at Wisconsin and at Miami, it’s difficult to disagree with Hutchins. Her involvement is merely one more item to watch for as the biggest scandal to hit college football in recent history. As we do, let us not forget her important role in the development of Badger athletics as they are today.