Apparently, cheating has gotten bigger than ever

For some of us that have covered the SEC in various states, we’ve heard the stories for years about amounts being paid.

Many scoff at the notion of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Every athletic director tries to dismiss it as being silly and nobody admits their school does it.

But now word is starting to leak out on the day Ole Miss goes before the NCAA Infractions Committee, which is little more than a kangaroo court with it’s head in the sand.

Dennis Dodd of CBSSports.com wrote Monday that the numbers are becoming staggering and now we have proof.

SBNation with Mississippi State linebacker Leo Lewis and the numbers are startling.

After going through the song and dance with the investigator with Lewis’ attorney clarifying things is when it got interesting.

Then Lewis started talking. About money. About free hotels, free rides to visit college campuses, hundred-dollar handshakes, free apparel, and even more money, bags of cash he says he received from multiple SEC programs totaling over $21,000 during the final week before National Signing Day in February 2015.

Apparently that is the tip of the iceberg as Lewis admitted he received $11,000 from Mississippi State.

Within the piece, Lewis’ mother Tina Henderson told a former Ole Miss assistant that LSU had offered $650,000 for the services of her son.

Dodds did some checking and apparently there is more than just smoke to the story:

And there is reason to believe $650,000 is close to the truth. I checked with the story’s author, Steven Godfrey, and he said confirmed the figure wasn’t a typo on his part or the person transcribing the testimony.

More than that, there is anecdotal and factual evidence of sizable six-figure payouts.

The father of former Texas A&M wide receiver Ricky Seals-Jones said he was offered $600,000 for the services of his son. That shocking information came from the fine reporting by authors Armen Keteyian and Jeff Benedict in their 2013 book “The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big Time Football.” One SEC and one ACC school, the father said, offered to double the offer the other school made for Seals-Jones.

The Ole Miss investigation, which started in 2012, has reached out there are allegations that may come out against many other SEC schools.

There is an entire group of former Ole Miss law students — now lawyers — that have been compiling information on other schools in and out of the SEC.

I’ve been told they are just waiting on the NCAA decision to come down and the documentation is real with proof.

And Dodd nailed it solidly by asking what a top quarterback is worth if linebackers are going for $650,000.

It’s scary to think that might be the going rate for any 18-year-old, who thanks to the sugar daddies, would have no problem changing a hundred but can’t change his own oil.

Too much, too often for the too young, it would seem. Nothing seems to have changed from the “glory days” of cheating in the 1980s except the zeroes at the end of the offer.

This is not to disparage LSU, Ole Miss or any other school that may have been named in the NCAA’s investigation. This is all about the Benjamins. It’s stunning a booster/school would go to such lengths.

While everyone wants to focus on wins and losses while the season is going on, we may have a bigger story brewing.

Much bigger.