The 9 Strangest Scandals In College Football History

College football has historically been a hotbed for the many, many scandals that have unfolded over the years, as dozens of programs have been rocked by situations that have created a public relations nightmare.

Plenty of those scandals have involved some incredibly disturbing scenarios (i.e. Jerry Sandusky and Penn State and the explosive allegations that led to a changing of the guard at Baylor), but there are more than a few others that stand out for their sheer absurdity.

There are a number of college football scandals that would almost be too absurd to believe if they didn’t actually unfold in real life, but the sport has an uncanny ability to spawn incidents that fall under that particular umbrella.

There’s no shortage of examples to pick from, but you’d be hard-pressed to find many others that managed to measure up to the ones on this list.

Manti Te'o's Fake Girlfriend

College football has a history stretching back over 150 years, and while there’s no telling if it will still be A Thing 150 years from now, I have a hard time believing we’ll be treated to a stranger story than Manti Te’o and his non-existent girlfriend if that ends up being the case.

Unlike most of the other “scandals” on this list, Te’o wasn’t really at fault and the story didn’t have any tangible impact on Notre Dame.

With that said, the star linebacker for the Fighting Irish found himself at the center of a media firestorm following the end of his senior season—one he’d devoted to the memory of Lennay Kekua, the girlfriend he said had died following a battle with leukemia on the same day his grandmother passed away in September 2012.

By now, I think virtually everyone is aware Te’o had actually been catfished by a man who’d fallen in love with him and made up a fake identity to pursue a relationship under some incredibly false pretenses en route to sparking one of the most unbelievable stories in the history of college football.

 

Bobby Petrino's Motorcycle Accident

In 2012, Arkansas head coach Bobby Petrino showed up to a press conference in a neck brace and a face covered in road rash after being involved in a motorcycle crash outside of Fayetteville.

The school went out of its way to stress no one else was involved in the accident, but things took a very interesting turn when a police report rebuked that claim thanks to the presence of Jessica Dorrell, a former volleyball player at Arkansas who Petrino had recently hired to serve as the football program’s player development coordinator.

That development led to the 51-year-old Petrino (who was married with four kids) admitting he’d been engaged in an affair with the 25-year-old Dorrell.

While he’d been gearing up for his fifth season at Arkansas after leading the Razorbacks to an 11-2 record the previous year, his time at the school subsequently came to an abrupt end (although he returned as the team’s offensive coordinator head of the 2024 campaign).

The Toomer's Corner Oaks Poisoning

In 1896, Toomer’s Drugs opened for business right across the street from Auburn University, and its proprietors had a tradition of covering the oak trees outside the building in the ticker tape from telegraphs whenever the Tigers won a game on the road.

The hub dubbed “Toomer’s Corner” eventually became a staple of postgame celebrations where toilet paper eventually became the decoration of choice—a decades-long tradition of “rolling” that came to a shocking end thanks to what unfolded in 2010.

That year, Auburn defeated Alabama in the Iron Bowl, and a couple of months later, an anonymous Crimson Tide fan called into Paul Finebaum’s radio show to let him know he’d decided to get some revenge by poisoning the oak trees.

The culprit was eventually identified as Harvey Updyke, who spent 70 days in jail and was ordered to pay $800,000 in restitution for a stunt that led to all of the trees being cut down (he’d only paid $6,900 of that sum when he passed away in 2020).

Wake Forest Betrayed By A Former Coach

In 2013, Dave Clawson was hired to replace Jim Grobe as the head football coach at Wake Forest University, and the Demon Deacons struggled to find their footing after going 3-9 in his first two seasons at the helm.

There were a number of factors that played into that underwhelming start, but Clawson certainly didn’t get any help from Tommy Elrod, a former Wake Forest QB who worked as an assistant coach for a decade but pivoted to covering the team’s games on the radio after Clawson declined to retain his services after coming aboard.

That didn’t sit well with Elrod, who decided to retaliate by reaching out to opposing teams before they faced off against the Demon Deacons to offer up the game plan in order to undermine Clawson out of spite.

Elrod was promptly fired after those revelations came to light, and while Wake Forest didn’t suddenly transform into a national powerhouse in the wake of “WakeyLeaks,” the team was still able to stage a solid turnaround with him out of the picture.

Connor Stalions

I’m assuming most people are familiar with the most recent entry on this list (a scandal that is also still ongoing thanks to an NCAA investigation that’s been dragged out for close to a year), but it wouldn’t be complete without mentioning it.

Michigan was far from the first school to be accused of stealing signs from its opponents, but the method in which the team attempted to get the upper hand stands out from the rest of the pack in a big way.

The central figure in the scandal was Connor Stalions, a former Marine and Wolverines superfan who spent three years traveling to at least 30 games (including one where he managed to infiltrate Central Michigan’s sideline) to scout teams on Michigan’s upcoming schedule in order to decipher the hand signals they used to communicate plays.

Stalions resigned from his role as a staffer when the scheme came to light in the middle of a 2023 season that would end with Michigan winning a national championship, and the dust swirling around the bizarre saga continues to swirl to this day.

Jameis Winston's Crab Legs Heist

Jameis Winston was at the center of a handful of controversies during his time playing quarterback at Florida State, but none of them were weirder than what unfolded as he was wrapping up his second-to-last year in Tallahassee.

In April 2014, the world learned Winston had been cited by police for shoplifting $32 worth of crab legs (and crawfish) from a Publix near campus (an incident that unfolded a year after he was accused of using ketchup cups to steal soda at a Burger King).

Winston didn’t face any punishment from the football team, although the two-sport athlete was suspended from FSU’s baseball team for five days until he completed the 20 hours of community service he had served as a result.

After he graduated, he implied he’d really taken the fall for a Publix employee who’d given the food to him for free due to his reputation—an impermissible benefit that would’ve likely led to an NCAA investigation).

Ohio State's TattooGate

Winston probably could’ve avoided ending up in that last situation if he’d played college football in the NIL Era, and the same can be said for the parties who were impacted by the scandal that unfolded at Ohio State in 2010.

The Buckeyes were preparing to play in the Sugar Bowl that season when the NCAA announced it had suspended five players (including star quarterback Terrelle Pryor) who were accused of trading autographs and memorabilia for tattoos at a parlor in Columbus.

However, that development was just the tip of the iceberg, as a subsequent investigation led to the discovery of similar exchanges players used to get their hands on marijuana and cars they couldn’t have afforded on their own, and emails came out that showed head coach Jim Tressel had attempted to cover up the scheme.

Tressel ultimately resigned, Pryor prematurely declared for the NFL Draft to avoid the five-game suspension he was hit with, and the NCAA forced Ohio State to vacate all of its wins from the 2010 campaign.

Pole Assassin

In 2021, we were treated to a simply absurd story involving Texas special teams coordinator Jeffs Banks, who was named alongside a woman named Danielle Thomas in a lawsuit filed by the family of a child who was allegedly bitten by a monkey at a haunted house Banks had set up in his backyard for Halloween.

It didn’t take long for the internet to discover Thomas was an exotic dancer who adopted “Pole Assassin” as a nickname and routinely performed alongside the monkey in question.

Texas declined to hit Banks with any form of punishment, and in the summer of 2024, he and Thomas tied the knot in a wedding ceremony attended by Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian.

Mike Price's Downfall At Alabama

Alabama found itself in need of a new head coach prior to the start of the 2003 season after Dennis Franchione headed to Texas A&M due to NCAA sanctions that were handed down due to recruiting violations under Mike DuBose.

It appeared they’d found a replacement in Mike Price, who was coming off two stellar seasons at Washington State. However, he was abruptly fired thanks to a series of events that unfolded when he headed to Florida to play in a pro-am golf tournament shortly after spring practices began.

What happened? Well, Price (who had already drawn the ire of school officials for drinking late into the night at watering holes in Tuscaloosa) was reportedly seen dropping hundreds of dollars at the kind of adult establishment in Pensacola where Pole Assassin would’ve felt right at home before drunkenly heading back to his hotel with a woman who racked up a room service bill that totaled close to $1,000 after ordering one of every item on the menu.

The 51-year-old Price (who was also married) found himself out of a job when the night of debauchery was brought to Alabama’s attention, as he was fired before coaching a single game and forfeited a contract that would’ve paid him $10 million over the course of seven years.