I'm surprised that from the sounds of it Goodwin's recruitment went down this path. I thought he was a grounded kid who'd keep the process on the up and up. As another poster alluded to, it's a corrupt system where schools make tens of millions per year, coaches have to protect their multimillion-dollar jobs in a hypercompetitive market, the NCAA is a greed-driven cover-up machine, and organizational homeostasis (i.e. all of the rich, influential people maintaining their wealth and influence) depends on a constant flow of uncompensated labor.
These kids have tutors doing their homework, special accommodations for exams, easy classes; they're all funneled into majors like Leisure Studies and Sports Management unless they put their foot down. They don't really get compensation in the form of a world-class education: in the revenue sports, they're there to be a cash cow.
Some kids and their handlers keep the recruitment clean and then get to school, insist on challenging majors, work their tails off, and get value out of the university in the form of a degree. It's pretty much up to the kid and (more importantly) his support system from day one how clean they're going to keep the process. Most kids ask for various forms of compensation in order to commit and then skate through school without putting in more than the minimal required amount of effort to stay eligible.
For what it's worth, I've heard that Illinois plays the talent acquisition game cleaner than most and Groce has a lot of integrity. That means we'll probably keep getting curveballs like Cliff, Evans, Goodwin, et al.
