As soon as Yahoo! published Charles Robinson's expose on the rampant and flagrant rule breaking by the football program at the University of Miami, it was only a matter of time before one of the most noted proselytizers for the myth of "the U" stepped forward to give his two cents.
Michael Irvin, who fashioned a free-wheeling Hall of Fame career in the NFL after leaving Miami in 1988, unloaded on Robinson's main source for the story, Nevin Shapiro, when he joined Max Kellerman and Marcellus Wiley on ESPN Radio Los Angeles.
Irvin, who left the Miami campus long before Shapiro began spreading his ill-gotten cash around in 2002, questioned the credibility of the source of the allegations, a convicted felon who ran a $930 million ponzi scheme.
I called him a snake and rapist because think about it this this way…he’s snaking people, but you are a rapist. How do you walk into someone’s home. Forget football. Forget the University of Miami. I don’t care about it. How do you walk into someone’s home and sit and eat dinner with them? Watch and look at their kids? Look at all the things in their home that they worked hard over the years to gather and then you take a check and then you go and blow away all of their savings? Man it doesn’t get any lower than this. [In reference to Nevin Shapiro's $930 million dollar Ponzi scheme] It doesn’t get any lower than this. You sit with people and you not only take money from these people and you go here and you rape these kids of their future.”
Irvin's own wild ways have been well documented through the years, and the retired wide receiver, who earned the nickname "the Playmaker" for his on-the-field exploits, has no illusions about how he would have handled the sort of enticements that Shapiro was offering.
“I ain’t never met him. I said this too though and I’ll be honest with you, I would have fell to those aphrodisiacs that he was throwing around. I would have fallen into that. I would fall into it. Listen I wasn’t able to handle at 19,18, 20. I wasn’t even able to handle it at 30. Thirty-five? I just got here at forty-five! I just got here. If you would have offered me boats, women, and my hands are up in the air.
The interview was transcribed by Steven Cuce of Sports Radio Interviews. Click HERE to listen to the full segment.