Former Auburn head coach Gene Chizik (Bleacher Report)

Auburn is a once dirty, always dirty athletic department.

Here are a few things you might or might not know about Auburn, the school in the Southeastern Conference with the longest record of corruption.

The Tigers won the national championship in football with quarterback Cam Newton, whose father had been under investigation for soliciting money from other SEC schools to secure Newton’s signature on a grant-in-aid. Oh, by the way, Auburn was on the last year of a prior NCAA probation when it won the title under then-head coach Gene Chizik.

Former UNC basketball star Jeff Lebo was unsuccessful as Auburn’s head coach because he tried to win legally or without cheating. When former Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl served his three-year show-cause penalty for breaking NCAA recruiting rules at UT and was free to coach again in college, Auburn signed him to a $14 million contract.

Pearl hired Chuck Person, the school’s all-time leading scorer, who earned more than $23 million in the NBA but still needed to get involved in a relatively petty scheme of sports agents, money managers and shoe companies paying high school players to sign with Auburn – an Adidas school – and eventually sign endorsement contracts with the apparel and shoe giant.

Now Pearl, like Louisville’s Rick Pitino, claims he has no knowledge of the pay-to-play scheme that was exposed through a three-year sting operation by the Federal government. Louisville has already fired Pitino, but so far Pearl is ready to start practice for the new season despite Person’s suspension and his recruits being referenced all over the Feds’ case.

When Chizik left Auburn two years after his national championship, I was against UNC hiring him as Larry Fedora’s new defensive coordinator. Not because Chizik had been charged with or involved in any of the school’s NCAA woes; Carolina had suddenly found itself with a perception problem that, unfortunately, still exists today. Chizik improved the Tar Heel defense but not enough, in my opinion, to merit hiring him.

Auburn will soon be back on NCAA probation and Pearl will soon be back on the outside looking in — probably returning to ESPN, the network that is now splashing his name in the controversy. That’s how little integrity is left in most aspects of college sports today.