The 6-foot-6, 250-pound Newton accounted for a school-record 49 touchdowns and more than 4,000 yards from scrimmage this year, also becoming the first player in SEC history to rush for 1,000 yards and throw for 2,000 in the same season and the second player in NCAA history to run and pass for 20 touchdowns in the same year.
“This is a phenomenal young man,” Auburn coachGene Chizik said. “He’s different on the field and he’s different off the field. He’s a great kid. We get much joy and much satisfaction out of seeing our own get the benefits and see the fruits of his labor, which are many. It’s very well deserved, no question about it.
"Everything he gets he’s worked for and he deserves every bit of it."
Mark Madoff pictured in 2005 at the offices of the investment company created by his father. Photograph: GI/BM/Getty Images The eldest son of disgraced financier Bernard Madoff was found hanged in his New York apartment yesterday on the second anniversary of the billionaire investment manager's arrest for the biggest swindle in Wall Street history.
The body of Mark Madoff, 46, was discovered by his father-in-law, according to police, who said the emergency services were called to the SoHo apartment just before 7.30am. Madoff was hanging from a dog lead secured to a pipe in the living room. His two-year-old son was asleep in an adjoining bedroom.
Mark and his brother, Andrew, both held senior positions at their father's company, Madoff Investment Securities, until the firm's collapse at the end of 2008 when Madoff confessed to them that for decades much of the business had been run as a pyramid scheme.
Both sons insisted they had no idea that the firm was corrupt – they maintained that they worked for a legitimate market-making division, rather than within their father's fund management arm of the company.
Although under investigation, they have faced no criminal charges over the $65bn fraud. Last week, however, court-appointed bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard sued the two sons, alleging that Bernard Madoff and his wife transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars in ill-gotten gains to them.
"Mark Madoff took his own life today," Martin Flumenbaum, a lawyer for both sons, said in a statement. "This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy." Flumenbaum described Mark Madoff, who leaves a wife and three young children, as "an innocent victim of his father's monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo."
The Madoff name became a byword for fraud in December 2008 when Bernard Madoff confessed to his sons that the family business they both worked in was based on "one big lie". Essentially a Ponzi scheme, it worked by using new customers' deposits to fund withdrawals by existing clients. But the global financial crisis prompted the scheme to unravel, leaving thousands of victims bereft of their savings. Investors included Nobel Prize-winning author Elie Wiesel, actor Kevin Bacon and Hollywood director Steven Spielberg.
Friends of the family say that while his younger brother was tearful, Mark Madoff reacted with fury at the actions of his father, who pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 150 years in prison. A Vanity Fair profile said Mark became "obsessed with the scandal, huddled over his computer, hyper-scrutinising every story and blog posting he can find".
The brothers, who cut off all contact with their father and mother, Ruth, received obscene phone calls in the wake of the scandal and were the butt of suspicion among investment victims and the public, with critics suggesting that they should have asked more questions about the finances of Madoff Investment Securities. Such was the stigma attached to the family name that Mark Madoff's wife this year petitioned a court to adopt her maiden name, Morgan, for herself and for the couple's children. Only this week, a spokeswoman for the Madoffs told the Wall Street Journal: "Mark remains unalterably bitter about his father's deception and the injury his father has caused."
Seven people have been charged with criminal offences over the Madoff scandal, including chief financial officer Frank DiPascali and an auditor, David Friehling, who was supposed to be vetting the company's books.
In the wake of the furore, Bernard Madoff's sons have found themselves unemployable in professional circles. Mark Madoff tried to get a job in trading before starting a company making apps for iPads. His $6.5m holiday home in Nantucket, Massachusetts, is presently on the market.
His death came on the day of a final deadline for lawsuits to be filed by Madoff's bankruptcy trustee seeking recompense. A flurry of litigation has emerged from Picard's office, including suits against HSBC, several of Madoff's London-based employees and an Austrian banker, Sonja Kohn, whom Picard accused of being a "criminal soulmate" of the jailed financier.
Mark Madoff's hanging is the third suicide linked to the scandal. A French fund manager, Thierry de la Villehuchet, took his own life after discovering he had lost $1bn of his clients' money by lodging it with Madoff. William Foxton, a former soldier from Hampshire who lost his family's life savings in Madoff's empire, shot himself last year.
