Futurepedia: The fix is in across campus - SPiN - CBSSports.com The Lighter Side of Sports

Scandals of college sports and organized crime

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following excerpts are from a sports almanac published in 2057 that chronicles topics from the past 60 years. Look for it in five decades from the shelves of Wal-TargetMart for $199.99.

American sports fans like to believe all college athletes nobly stay true to the idea of their status as amateurs. But considering the billions of dollars annually funneled into program coffers and coaches' pockets, there is potential for abuse in the system.

Organized crime has found it profitable to step in to line the pockets of student-athletes who were susceptible to temptation. Here are a few instances of when the mob set up a tailgating party to try to wet their beaks:

1978: Mobster Henry Hill -- whose life would later be explored in the 1990 Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas -- was a central figure in a point-shaving scandal involving the Boston College basketball team. This chapter of his life was not presented in the movie because Robert DeNiro indicated he would pass off his role as Jimmy Conway in order to be cast as the basketball.

2011: Scorsese directs his first sequel, Goodfellas 2: Just Bustin' Your Balls, to finally tell the story of the points shaving scandal. Ray Liotta returns as Henry Hill, Leonardo DiCaprio plays the team captain, Daniel Day-Lewis plays the BC coach and Robert DeNiro plays the coach's clipboard.

2014: Florida State football coach Jimbo Fisher alerts the NCAA there might be mob gambling ties to his program. Fisher grows suspicious during the fourth quarter of a 42-13 rout of Maryland when the Jumbotron features the announcement: "ATTENTION DEFENSE: MAKE SURE THE TERPS SCORE THREE QUICK TD$ ... CAPICE?"

2025: The athletic director of the University of Vermont attends a boosters banquet where several alumni with ties to organized crime quietly indicate they would like to rig some meets of the school's equestrian team. The AD angrily turns away their request. The next morning, he awakens to find a severed horse head at the foot of his bed. The AD then explains to the mobster-boosters the reason he cannot fix any equestrian meets is because the Catamounts do not have an equestrian team. The mobster-boosters then start a five-year capital campaign to start one.

2026: After winning the Drum Corps International World Championships for three years running, the Purdue marching band is found to have been influenced to throw its attempt at a four-peat. Officials became suspicious when the band would only attempt to play the theme from Scarface and that in the horn section, at least a dozen band members were blowing into the wrong end of their trumpet.

2032: The first-year basketball program at Florida Intercoastal University has its Final Four appearance voided from the record books when it was proved the South Florida mob provided no-show summer jobs for team members parking cars at Miami Marlins games. NCAA investigators were clued in by the fact that Marlins fans are also no-shows for home games.

2033: The first-year football program at Florida Intercontinental University has its BCS championship vacated when it was discovered that every member of the team was a state-of-the-art android with ultra-advanced artificial intelligence ... and that the androids' super strength was boosted by the injection of horse steroids ... and that the coaches had filmed the other team's walkthrough ... and most egregiously, that some coaches had lent team members as much as $20 to help buy textbooks before financial aid money was cleared.

2034: The first-year cheerleading program at Florida Intercourse University was forced to withdraw from the Collegiate Cheerleading Championships when it is discovered that the team was a mob-sponsored prostitution ring that catered to high-rolling boosters of all schools who could afford to drop up to $20,000 per session. The school was allowed to keep the $30 million the team generated by such clients through the years to finance new carpets for the athletic office.

2044: Notre Dame's student newspaper publishes an exposé that proves for decades the football team and TV broadcast partner NBC engaged in a money-laundering scheme to hide their smuggling of an illegally formulated stadium turf fertilizer. Student reporters grew suspicious when the individual blades of grass at Notre Dame Stadium instantly grow and entangle the ankles of opposing players, and then eat their feet once they are tripped to the ground.

2045: During spring break, all of the mascots of the Big 12 were found whacked execution style in a hotel room on South Padre Island. It was rumored that one of the mascots was about to enter the Witness Protection Program in exchange for immunity in revealing the perfect, no-fail, maximum revenue playoff system they had devised for college football.