NEW BRUNSWICK—At Rutgers University, it was a football coach working surreptitiously behind the scenes to boost the grade of an academically ineligible cornerback.
The University of North Carolina's athletic department was charged with steering athletes into "GPA booster" classes to keep them playing, in a cheating scheme that went on for 18 years.
And the Syracuse University basketball program was heavily penalized for a series of major compliance failures, including interference with an academic program to make sure star players stayed eligible to remain on the court.
Despite the threat of sanctions, suspensions and other threats by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, academic fraud similar to what was recently charged at Rutgers is no stranger to college athletic programs, with phony classes, no-show lectures and grade changing tactics still key parts of the playbook of athletic programs across the country, records show.