One old quote that puts the word ‘scandal’ in perspective

Maryland’s admitted mistake had a victim. Other college sports scandals haven’t really hurt anyone.

Maryland president Wallace Loh in 2017:

An individual who identified himself as a member of the University of Maryland faculty asked Loh how he could be certain that the university is “protected from the corrupting influence of athletics.” In response, Loh made an unprompted reference to UNC.

“As president I sit over a number of dormant volcanoes,” Loh said. “One of them is an athletic scandal. It blows up, it blows up the university, its reputation, it blows up the president.

“For the things that happened in North Carolina, it’s abysmal. I would think that this would lead to the implementation of the death penalty by the NCAA. But I’m not in charge of that.”

Maryland president Wallace Loh in 2018:

“Based on what [it knows] at this time, the University of Maryland accepts legal and moral responsibility for the mistakes that our training staff made on that fateful workout day of May 29.”

The former scandal was a seven-year NCAA investigation that found many North Carolina students, including many athletes, took a bad class.

The latter scandal was the death of Maryland lineman Jordan McNair after a training drill and the university’s immediate response.

Academic fraud is certainly more concerning than, say, the so-called scandals that revolve around players getting money. But we should be careful how we talk about paperwork scandals in a sport that so often involves incidents with actual victims.