The big winner of the college admissions cheating scandal is, of course, James Van Der Beek
On Tuesday the FBI announced a crackdown on what anyone who's ever gone to college knows happens: rich kids get preferential treatment. The investigation charged 50 people, including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, in what's been described as a massive bribery scheme to facilitate students into prestigious universities under the guise of athletics. Additionally, the students were given assistance, if not downright false entrance exams, to "earn admission." The sting, dubbed "Operation Varsity Blues," uncovered $25 million in bribes to schools like Stanford, Texas, Georgetown, UCLA and Yale.
Authorities called it the biggest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department. "These parents are a catalog of wealth and privilege," U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said in Boston during a press conference. Even for the low, low bar set by the NCAA, this is a bad. (A week before March Madness begins, no less.) Also a sad day for the innocence of "Full House" fans around the world.
But there is one winner in this debacle, a winner that makes nonsense like this tolerable.
We're talking, of course, about James Van Der Beek.
The Beek is referring to his seminal scene—one that's been called the greatest performance acting as ever witnessed—in the operation's eponymous film "Varsity Blues," when Van Der Beek's Jonathan "Mox" Moxon character tells his father to stop living vicariously through him.
Who could have envisioned that moment still resonating 20 years later? Clearly "Varsity Blues" was a piece of art ahead of its time.
In a related note, Van Der Beek's character ultimately gives up football and goes to Brown on a full "academic scholarship." Odd, because Ivy League schools don't award such scholarships. Meaning...oh no. This operation goes so deep it bleeds into the fictional realm. Clearly nothing is sacred.
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