When Gareth Sweeney checked the flurry of text messages on his phone Wednesday morning, the editor of Transparency International's Corruption in Sport Initiative couldn't believe the news they brought.
Of all the scandals to entangle sports in recent decades — the tearful doping admission by seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and bribery allegations surrounding Salt Lake City's bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics among them — few could compete with the global surprise from images of Swiss police leading FIFA officials out of a posh Zurich hotel.
Dogged for years by suspicions of corruption, the governing body for the world's most popular sport is now in the center of a sprawling, spiraling scandal.