The most galling part of this is that nothing will ever be done about it. I don't know how true Craven's allegations are (could there be a better name to raise this issue?), but it certainly should be the subject of full investigation--with teeth: illegal money has altered the landscape of the sport, skewing the very nature of the competition away from the on-field events and into smoke-filled back rooms, reeking of mob-like racketeering. That's where the winners and losers have been made.
If true (and it seems far more likely than not), the SEC (and whomever else has been doing this) has become the predominate power in the most lucrative college sport (ever) through decades of systematic cheating; this would be far worse than any performance enhancing drug scheme, even beyond the Armstrong "peloton" and the coopting of the enforcement entities or major league baseball. Congress held hearings and got involved in those (the reasons for doing so were certainly not pristine, of course).
And the incessant drumbeat of commentators--who make money as the system grows--thrums away, this is always how it has been. As long as the advertising dollars flow in, nothing will change? There's too much money involved to ever take a genuinely close look at the details of what's been going on. Frankly, the PAC12 should have sued the NCAA and the SEC a long time ago for systemic fraud, racketeering, bribery, and breaches of contract, etc. Of course, they would never do that, as it would look bad and adversely impact their own increasingly meager piece of the pie. (I'm sure there are some serious legal hurdles to overcome in the manner by which the system is set up in the first place, making such a suit either impractical or improper. It would clearly be an insanely complicated, decades-long litigation, wherein the SEC's best defense might well be unclean hands, and the PAC12 is, I'm sure, well aware of its own issues. It's just a frustrated thought.)
For me, this sort of problem stretches well beyond sport: the SEC (or the whole of CFA) being simply, too big to fail--or even investigate in any real way. So instead, let's exalt the greatness of the cheaters and revel in their successful take-over of the sport.
It's deeply frustrating, as this is simply not how a society of rules and laws is supposed to work. But money has been shown, over and over again, to trump accountability. Those willing to do these things know that going in.