Keith Van Horn was just a freshman at the University of when he learned his father had died of a sudden heart attack in 1994. Still years away from superstardom with the Nets, the teenager received the grim news over an early morning breakfast paid for by Utes head basketball coach Rick Majerus, who would live to regret the 3am meal at a Salt Lake City deli.'I guess I should've… said, ''Hey, you owe me $9.90 for the ham and eggs,''' Majerus told a decade later, when both the coach and school faced NCAA penalties over what became known in Utah as 'Foodgate.'Majerus was, in the eyes of college sports' governing body, guilty of buying food for a grieving student athlete. At the time, the molehill of a scandal crystalized the NCAA as a reckless bureaucracy fixated on enforcing archaic rules over player compensation to the detriment of the students it was supposed to serve. Critics have long pointed to the NCAA's efforts to deny wages and employee status to its athletes, and the scandal only served to cement the organization's worsening reputation.
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