"The first distinguishing characteristic of the Varsity Blues scandal is that it's extremely funny: a bunch of rich parents paid a guy to photoshop their underachieving children into athletic scenarios they were not skilled enough to earn as part of a baroque scheme to get them into various prestigious universities. This shoddy work highlights the brazenness of Rick Singer's scheme, that he and his clientele were so unconcerned with getting caught that they scarcely bothered to cover their tracks."
"It is notable, for example, that the parents risking light federal prison raps to get their kids into places like University of Southern California were themselves rich, but not of the ultra-wealthy stratum of society that could simply buy a private school a new library in exchange for admission. This was class war by the nouveau riche against the aristocracy."
"Sports are seen as one of the final truly meritocratic playing fields. This week's guest, Oregon State professor Kirsten Hextrum, explains that parents in this tier of wealth have been investing in prohibitively expensive coaching for their kids for a long time, and those expenses can be thought of as a type of class advantage in a field often conceived of as being purely defined by genetics."
Varsity Blues involved wealthy parents paying Rick Singer to fabricate athletic credentials, including photoshopped images, to secure admission for underperforming children. The fraudulent materials were poorly executed, underscoring the patrons' brazenness and minimal efforts to hide evidence. The parents belonged to a wealthy but not ultra-elite class that used such schemes as a form of competition against traditional elites. Athletics functioned as a perceived meritocratic pathway, but expensive coaching and investment created class-based advantages that converted sports into another arena of inequality. A podcast called Only If You Get Caught ended its first season and seeks story ideas at patrick@defector.com.
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