Parties, payments and prostitutes: lurid scandal of US college football...

One of autumn's great sporting shows has just begun. Last Thursday, at 6pm Eastern time, the Louisville Cardinals beat the Murray State Racers 21-9 in a televised game, and for the next four months, Americans will be transfixed by the raucous pageant of college football – that is, if they can escape the reek of what may be the biggest single scandal ever to hit a sport which has had more than its share of them.


Nevin Shapiro was a Florida businessman who operated a $930m (£580m) Ponzi scheme in the grocery business and is now paying for his crime in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia. But that is not why for football cognoscenti he is now a household name.

Shapiro lavished support on the University of Miami's football programme, one of the largest in the country. Too lavishly, it would appear. Over eight years until 2010, he is alleged to have showered hundreds of thousands of dollars on dozens of players, providing them with cash, presents, free travel and other services, including prostitutes laid on at parties on a yacht he had bought for that purpose. More...

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