Who'd a thunk it? The Fiesta Bowl appears to be corrupt, and student-athletes 'aren't employees'

It isn't just celebrity deaths that come in threes.

For the NCAA and big-time college sport, a three-headed monster of sorts has plagued it Tuesday and Wednesday.

1. First, the Fiesta Bowl revealed itself to be -- surprise! -- a pretty dubious enterprise.

According to an investigative report commissioned by none other than the Fiesta Bowl, thanks to good reporting done in the past by the Arizona Republic, bowl executives funneled campaign contributions to local politicians, flew elected officials to Boston, Chicago and elsewhere at the bowl organization's expense, and even spent over $30,000 on a birthday party for the now-fired CEO of the bowl, John Junker.

Coaches get five-figure and even six-figure bonuses for taking teams to bowl games, even the Insight Bowl. Players get gift bags from the bowls that cannot be valued at over $500.

Here's a pretty damning paragraph from the New York Times story on the revelations:

The most serious revelations involve nearly a dozen employees who told investigators that the chief executive and others working for the bowl, the host of one of the nation's pre-eminent college football games, encouraged them to make political contributions, then reimbursed them with sham bonus payments. Some said they were then pressured to lie about the practice.

Nice, huh? The Fiesta Bowl, by the way, also owns and operates the Insight Bowl that Iowa graced three months ago. The reason the Insight Bowl got Iowa and its ever-faithful bowl-traveling followers is because it ponied up a ton more cash after the 2009 season to move up the bowl chain. No more visits from Minnesota (three Insight Bowl appearances in the previous four years) for that game.

2. PBS' Frontline investigative television show aired a segment Tuesday night entitled "Money and March Madness." To watch it, click here.

The premise: Universities, coaches, and the NCAA itself make a staggering amount of money from the NCAA men's basketball tournament. The players themselves are called "indentured servants" by some, and don't even get paid after college when their likenesses are used by the NCAA in video games, videotapes of classic games, and more.

So former college basketball star Ed O'Bannon is suing the NCAA. The suit challenges the contract the NCAA requires its athletes to sign forbidding them from ever earning money from their college careers.

The players come and go. The NCAA tourney television contract with CBS and the Turner networks nets the institution $10 billion over 14 years. That's 10 ... billion.

NCAA President Mark Emmert told Frontline "Student-athletes are students. They are not employees."

Technically, perhaps. But what do you think would happen to those "non-employees" if they begged off a practice to spend more time working on a school paper? Or if they opted not to participate in "voluntary" summer workouts?

3. HBO Sports has a "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" episode on Wednesday night. It also focuses on the money universities and the NCAA make off the student-athletes.

The show has a segment focusing on four Auburn University football players who who say they received illegal benefits while being recruited by and playing for Auburn when Tommy Tuberville was the head coach.

An excerpt from the SportsbyBrooks.com story that contains an advance copy of the transcript of the program:

Real Sports' Andrea Kremer voiceover: “McClover said it wasn't until he attended an all-star camp at Louisiana State University that he realized how the game is played. A game of money and influence.”

McClover: “Somebody came to me, I don't even know this person and he was like, ‘we would love for you to come to LSU and he gave me a handshake and it had five hundred dollars in there. … that's called a money handshake … I grabbed it and I'm like, ‘wow,' hell I thought ten dollars was a lot of money back then. Five hundred dollars for doing nothing but what I was blessed to do. I was happy.”

Kremer to McClover: “What did you say to the guy when he hands you five hundred dollars?”

McClover: “Thank you and I'm seriously thinking about coming to LSU.”

Kremer voiceover: “But McClover says there were money handshakes from boosters at other football camps too. At Auburn for a couple hundred dollars and at Michigan State. All the schools denied any wrongdoing. And things really started heating up a few months later when he went to Ohio State for an official visit where schools get a chance for one weekend to host prospective athletes. McClover says there were money handshakes from alumni there too. About a thousand dollars. And something else to entice him.”

McClover: “They send girls my way. I partied. When I got there I met up with a couple guys from the team. We went to a party and they asked me to pick any girl I wanted.”

Kremer: “Did she offer sexual services?“

McClover: “Yes.”

Kremer: “Did you take them?”

McClover: “Yes.”

..................

I would suggest this probably won't add up to a hill of beans. O'Bannon's lawsuit is a potentially major deal, of course, a game-changer. But he's fighting City Hall.

The Fiesta Bowl will be just fine. And dirty recruiting and rogue boosters have been around for a century now. It's big-boy sports. The stakes are high, and whenever the stakes are high in life, rules will get mangled.

But it makes for interesting mid-week programming. For a small percentage of us, anyway. The Final Four starts Saturday, and we'll all be watching.