Welcome to Miami Vice, episode 2011: The Collapse of the 'Canes.
Instead of chasing sleazy drug dealers who are tossing plenty of ill-gotten Ben Franklins around South Beach, detectives Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs begin this show sweating through their pastel suits in search of a seemingly invisible 5-foot-5 sleaze-bucket named Nevin Shapiro.
We say "invisible" because despite photographs of "Shady" Shapiro handing University of Miami president Donna Shalala a check for $50,000, despite his face being etched on a players' lounge after giving $150,000, no one at the "U" seems to have much memory of the guy.
Amazing how sunburned the brain can become when an outlaw punk begins squealing from his Atlanta prison cell that he blatantly broke NCAA rules with at least 72 Hurricane athletes.
Talk about vice. Shapiro has admitted, if not out and out bragged, that he's committed more crimes than the Godfather, and that doesn't even include the $930 million Ponzi scheme that's landed him in jail for 20 years.
He swears he gave the players money, promised them $5,000 "bounty" payments to knock opposing players out of games, bought them prostitutes, apparently briefly represented a couple of them as their sports agent after their 'Cane careers were over, and even allegedly bought a basketball player for $10,000.
If he had just paid off a couple of SAT proctors, Shapiro could have, as ESPN's Pat Forde suggested, "Hit for the scandal cycle."
But it's disturbing enough to see remarkably vibrant videos of Shapiro leading the 'Canes out of their canvas tunnel onto the field before a game. There are stories of him getting into a very public fight with a school compliance officer near the end of a bowl game, then presenting Shalala with the $50,000 check the following year.
Yet asked a month ago by Time Magazine how she'd deal with a bum like Shapiro, she said, "I have no tolerance for breaking rules. He wouldn't have lasted two minutes under me."
Instead, he lasted eight years, apparently hiding in plain sight, his dirty money the root of all Miami amnesia.
But Crockett and Tubbs didn't earn their cynical reps for nothing. Soon enough their focus shifts from Shapiro -- after all, he is in jail -- to Paul Dee, the Hurricane athletic director for 15 fascinating years who somehow wound up as the NCAA's chair on the Committee of Infractions.
How Dee ever rose to this level of power could become one of the greatest head-scratchers of all time, right up there with JFK's assassination, Sarah Palin and neck tattoos.
Under his watch, Miami athletics became embroiled in a 1993 Pell Grant fraud that the government later labeled, "Perhaps the largest centralized fraud ... ever committed in the history of the Pell Grant program."
Beyond that, the "U" provided over $400,000 worth of other, improper payments to Hurricane football players. The NCAA also ruled that the University botched its own drug-testing program.
In fact, the 'Canes were such a mess at that time that Sports Illustrated devoted a 1995 cover story to "Why Miami Should Drop Football."
Instead, the NCAA dropped the ball more than a decade later by placing Dee as head of the COI, then handing him the Southern Cal football case. They couldn't have made a more perplexing placement if they'd corralled Tiger Woods to do a public service announcement for monogamy.
The Trojan Nation can tell you syllable for syllable what Dee said when he announced last summer that USC would lose 30 scholarships and receive a two-year bowl ban almost exclusively for wrongs committed regarding Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush and basketball star O.J. Mayo.
And just to be clear about this, Bush was already playing for USC before any violations regarding him were committed, so the Trojans gained none of the performance advantages that the Hurricanes did for Shapiro reportedly paying perspective players.
Said the blowhard Dee last June, "High profile athletes demand high-profile compliance."
Really? So a program that's won five national championships since the 1980s, as the 'Canes have, isn't high-profile? A program that has one of the strongest brands in all of college football -- albeit a renegade one -- isn't high-profile?
No wonder Pac 12 commissioner Larry Scott couldn't wait to tell the Los Angeles Times on Thursday, "If the [Miami] allegations prove true, the words irony and hypocrisy don't seem to go far enough."
Unfortunately, the NCAA can't go far investigating Dee. He's retired, which means he's untouchable.
But as Crockett and Tubbs drop their pastel suits off at the dry cleaner in attempt to erase the stench of Paul Dee, they have a request of the NCAA.
Before it gets around to burying the Hurricanes, it owes a high-profile apology to Southern Cal. Not so much for the Trojans' penalty, but especially for the messenger who delivered it.