I didn't know Paul Dee.
I would venture to guess that many outside the upper echelons of the NCAA didn't know Paul Dee either.
At least not the Paul Dee that Ivan Maisel describes here...
Former Miami athletic director Paul Dee, who died Saturday night at age 65, was a gentle man and a gentleman who loved his university and served it in various roles for three decades. Dee, an attorney by trade, shunned the spotlight and valued loyalty. He brought back former ‘Canes assistant Butch Davis as head coach. He promoted assistants Larry Coker and Randy Shannon as his next two hires. USC fans never forgave him for his role as chair of the NCAA Committee on Infractions when it ruled on the Reggie Bush scandal. Yet those who knew him knew a man of integrity and a good guy.
I vehemently disagree about Dee being a man of integrity.
His famous quote of "high-profile players demand high-profile compliance" will live on forever...especially when a mere fifteen months later, the very university that Maisel claims that Dee loved so much was caught in a scandal that was far greater than the one that Dee hammered USC for.
Dee feigned ignorance in saying the following...
"We didn't have any suspicion that he was doing anything like this," Mr. Dee said last August while referring to Shapiro.
Really?
After all the money Shapiro gave the university, with all the unsupervised access he had and with all the time Shapiro spent with UM players off campus. Are we supposed to believe that Dee was really on top of things?
Hurricane football was really the only game in town for many years. Even when Marino was with the Dolphins. Miami has been in the same type of spotlight that USC has been in, so why wouldn't there be high-profile compliance of the city's most high-profile sports program?
The Paul Dee that Ivan Maisel describes is significantly different than the public face that many people remember Paul Dee for.
Dee hired Butch Davis? The same Butch Davis who was one of the main players in UNC football scandal?
Dee may have been a great husband and father. He may have been loyal to his school but a number of moves he made while he was the chair of the COI will remembered as heavy handed and hardly respected.
I met Ivan Maisel last year at the Pac-12 Media days in NYC. He was cordial enough and was pleasant to this peasant blogger but he is way off base here. Maisel might want to refer to his fellow ESPN colleague Ted Miller on the Paul Dee that many of in the CFB world remember.
USC was hardly blameless, but when stood up against Ohio State, UNC certainly Miami, what USC "should have known" is hardly all that.
Dee was not a man of integrity, Dee was not a gentle man in his position on the COI. Dee was hypocrite and an opportunist who desecrated the very oath he took when he became a lawyer when he threw due process out the window and allowed his investigators to fabricate and use hearsay evidence to nail a program that was winning and having a lot of fun doing it.
Dee is hardly the example of integrity that I would ever point to.
I wanted to see Dee humiliated in a deposition. I wanted him embarrassed by the NCAA investigation of Miami.
I won't get to see that.....His soon to be turned over emails will live on long and should expose him for exactly what he was.
That is good enough.