No school immune from stain of cheating

You can see the blue dome glisten from all parts of the city when the sun hits it just right.

It's a majestic setting, something out of a John Ford movie, a pristine, magnificent, almost holy backdrop perched atop a hill and overlooking the San Diego Bay, a jewel of a college campus whose centerpiece is a church with stained glass windows and marble columns and a bell tower topped with a 300-pound cross.

I have to believe some within the hierarchy at the University of San Diego have happened past the Immaculata more than usual in recent days.

The power of prayer has been known to stop and then bring rain.

I'm just not sure how much it could lessen the sting of a point-shaving scandal.

It can happen anywhere.

This much has now been confirmed.

The proof is at the depths of the NCAA's pecking order, at a school whose basketball program had a Rating Percentage Index of 319 and went 6-24 this past season and the pressure to win in a big-time way barely makes a blip on the Richter scale.

It can happen at a small Roman Catholic institution of 5,200 undergraduate students whose mission statement is to prepare leaders dedicated to ethical conduct and compassionate service and, just guessing here, not to engage in one of the worst types of dishonest behavior known to college athletics.

Yep. Even there.

Former USD basketball star Brandon Johnson was one of 10 indicted on federal charges that included gambling and conspiracy to commit sports bribery (translation: purposefully playing awful to ensure the scum get their bets covered). The only shocking part is that it happened at a place where there is no major college football, no dreaming of Bowl Championship Series inclusion, no millions and millions of TV dollars at stake.

Or is it?

"In sports, there is nothing worse than losing the integrity of the game because it calls into question for all that were involved: Was it real or was it not?" USD athletic director Ky Snyder said at a campus news conference Friday. "That spreads to other sports and other student-athletes, and it deteriorates the tremendous opportunity that intercollegiate athletics offers. ... This is the damage that point-shaving inflicts. This is not a victimless crime."

Nor, obviously, is cheating restricted to the mighty ones.

A pay-for-play scandal focuses on a Heisman Trophy quarterback from Auburn and his pastor father, and we barely blink. Southern California is placed on probation after its own Heisman star was found to have accepted improper benefits, and we yawn.

The head coach of one of the nation's most powerful football programs trades in his sweater vest for a suit and stands in front of cameras to explain why he intentionally withheld from his superiors critical information regarding possible rules violations by his players, and we shrug.

We expect shenanigans at Auburn and USC and Ohio State and Kentucky and Connecticut and others because of the mounting pressures to win big in football and basketball and then cash in even bigger.

But then it happens at a place such as USD and FBI agents are arresting former players and an assistant coach, and we realize no Division I program, however inconsequential it might appear, is safe from the stain such an awful act provides for years and years to come.

Oh, this much is certain: Things like this linger in a way that programs have been shut down and recruiting avenues destroyed and otherwise impeccable reputations of coaches and administrators and universities are forever tarnished.

"I really believe many at USD are still in denial," said Mark Zeigler, who has covered the scandal for the San Diego Union-Tribune since indictments came down. "It's like they're all still in shock. People are walking around campus as if they've seen a ghost. They can't fathom this happened at their school.

"They didn't comment extensively on it for days. It's as if their first reaction was to pull up the drawbridge, close the castle doors and click their heels three times and pretend it didn't happen.

"You have to understand -- there was one home basketball game this season where there were 39 kids in the student section, and when the game ended and the players walked over to thank them for their support, only six were still there. This is not major college athletics as most view them. Far from it.

"This is a place with good kids, that graduates its athletes, that is the exact opposite of excess and win at all costs in sports."

And yet when the sun hits it just right, the glistening dome of integrity is different today. A large dark shadow now covers the pristine castle atop the hill overlooking the bay.

If we needed further proof, we now have it:

It can happen anywhere.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 3 to 5 p.m. Monday and Thursday on "Monsters of the Midday," Fox Sports Radio 920 AM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.