Folks, we have ourselves another massive scandal (kind of) in college sports.
I say "kind of" because most of the college students or prospective college students involved didn't actually play a sport, and that's really the problem.
Basically, parents – including Aunt Becky from Full House – paid a guy tens of thousands of dollars to arrange for someone else to take the SAT and ACT on their children's behalf and get them admitted to colleges as fake recruited athletes due to their favored admissions status.
From NBCNews.com:
Prosecutors said the scheme was masterminded by William Rick Singer, the founder of a for-profit college preparation business based in Newport Beach, California.
Parents paid Singer between $15,000 and $75,000 per test for someone else to take the SAT or ACT exams in place of their college-aged sons or daughters, according to the court papers.
...
Riddell was paid roughly $10,000 per test, money that was often funneled through a charity account set up by Singer, the indictment says.
From 2011 to last month, parents paid Singer roughly $25 million to bribe coaches and university administrators to "designate their children as recruited athletes, or other favored admissions categories," according to the court papers.
In some cases, Singer’s associates created fake athletic “profiles” in an effort to improve the students chances of getting accepted by making them appear to be highly successful high school athletes.
The schools included Georgetown, Stanford, UCLA, San Diego, USC, Texas, Wake Forest, and Yale, but there's no indication that the schools were involved in the process. However, some college coaches have been charged along with actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin.
As you can imagine, some of the excerpts from the documents were extremely entertaining.
Oh baby!!! pic.twitter.com/rYvSkRlai4
— Jack Dickey (@jackdickey) March 12, 2019
The footnote!! pic.twitter.com/3y6JGR7DfG
— Jack Dickey (@jackdickey) March 12, 2019
This section in the Federal indictment on getting a kid onto USCs womens water polo team is remarkable: pic.twitter.com/LwgE4Np1Y6
— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) March 12, 2019
You get the picture.
Somehow, it gets better. Loughlin, who played Aunt Becky in ABC's Full House, appears to have gotten her daughter into USC as a fake crew athlete. That's especially hilarious and concerning given this context from a Yahoo! article published in August:
Olivia Giannulli is used to living a lavish life, led by her famous mother Lori Loughlin and designer father Mossimo Giannulli. But the 19-year-old YouTuber, who goes by the name Olivia Jade online, has gotten herself into a bit of trouble, as subscribers are calling her out for her “spoiled” outlook on college.
In one of her latest videos, the teen opened up about her future plans after recently graduating from her private high school in California. And although she’s already made quite the career for herself on social media, people were excited to hear that Olivia is still planning to attend college in the fall. However, her explanation of why she wants to pursue higher education has people expressing their disappointment.
“I don’t know how much of school I’m gonna attend,” she shared with her nearly 2 million subscribers, after explaining her extensive work schedule. “But I’m gonna go in and talk to my deans and everyone, and hope that I can try and balance it all. But I do want the experience of like game days, partying…I don’t really care about school, as you guys all know.”
Have mercy.
I'd bet the answer to how much school she's going to attend at USC is now going to be "very little."
