I'm assuming that Wooden had/has about the same cult of personality around him that JoePa did, and all the attendant corruption that causes/enables that has been decried around here.

and the story about Bear Bryant and paying recruits was that he told his assisstants "don't pay more than the going rate"

Academic standards for athletes are a completely different issue than paying recruits to come play for you, Andy, as I hope you would realize.

It's unfair to excuse or mitigate in any respect what happened under Wooden with Sam Gilbert by saying, "yeah, but athletes everywhere have different standards in the classroom."

Utterly different things.

Apologies to Len Elmore for that autopilot misnaming in #42.

Academic standards for athletes are a completely different issue than paying recruits to come play for you, Andy, as I hope you would realize.

It's unfair to excuse or mitigate in any respect what happened under Wooden with Sam Gilbert by saying, "yeah, but athletes everywhere have different standards in the classroom."

Utterly different things.

Of course they are. My question was independent of any specific scandal, big or small. But the corruption that manifests itself in lowering standards for athletes has the same root as the corruption that pays them under the table: Rampant hypercommercialism. In 1929 the Carnegie Foundation issued a 383 page report on American College Athletics, whose findings and concerns could have been written today. The only differences would involve technological advances and several decimal points.

I came up with a back-of-the-envelope way of measuring dynasties a while back: (titles)^2/(years). Features:

A stretch of N consecutive titles has a dynasty score of N
Adding on one more title after in a span of two years always improves the score

So, the Cowboys and Pats get 2.25 for their 3 Super Bowls-in-4 years stretches. The '70s Steelers get 2.67 for 4 titles in 6 years, while the Yankees get 3.2 for 4 WS in 5 years from '96-'00. The Celtics from '56-'69 won 11 in 13 years; they get a 9.3. (Or you can extend it through '86, with 16 titles in 30 years, but that comes in a bit lower.) The Canadiens from '52 to '79 won 16 Stanley Cups in 27 years, good for a 9.5. And the Yankees from '23-'62 won 20 WS in 40 years, for an even 10.0. (Technically, they do a bit better from '27-'62, with 19 titles in 36 years, a 10.03.)

Anyway, this is hardly a rigorous tool, but I think it works relatively well for as simple as it is.

My alma mater often has been a SERIOUS contender for national collegiate bowling titles - and won more than their share of them. So there's that.

Goose Givens at Kentucky, but that's at the tail end of the Wooden era.

I don't think Andy wants to hear about Jack "Goose" Givens :-) It is no coincidence that Kentucky's ability/desire to recruit and play black athletes coincided with Joe B. Hall "officially" taking over the head coaching position from Adolph Rupp, in 1972. For what it's worth, it was common knowledge (at least in Kentucky) that Hall had been the defacto coach at UK for several years before the school's administration was able to ease Rupp out the door. At that it took Hall several years before the residual stigma of the Rupp era dissipated and black athletes felt truly welcome at UK.

I don't think Andy wants to hear about Jack "Goose" Givens :-)

Are you kidding? Any Duke destroyer is a friend of mine. But you're absolutely right about Hall and Rupp. The sweetest game in many lives was that 1966 final between Texas Western and Kentucky.