I find Sabato's participation in this curious, too.
About three weeks ago, I attended a lecture by Larry Sabato at UVA, on the morning before the first home football game (this is why UVA football will never be bigtime, most fans tailgate, UVA fans attend academic lectures...). Anyway, Sabato is an excellent speaker and gave a fine talk, making little jabs at politicians on both sides of the aisle. But he spent much more time attacking George Allen than any other politician. Some of this is obviously explained by the fact that it was the Virginia Senate race. But it wasn't just the amount of time he spent, it was also the personal nature of his words. You could tell, Sabato hates Allen. I mentioned this to some other people after the talk, because I had no idea up until that point, but we were left with the same conclusion about that. Sabato said Allen was dumb, that he was given the quarterback job at UVA because of his daddy, and that the "macaca" episode was just the tip of the iceburg. It is that last one that I didn't think much of at the time, but now seems more significant. He said he had so many stories he could tell, at least implying more substantial racist speech that he had witnessed, since he attended UVA with Allen. Now that I see a handful of former UVA students come out with this racist charge against Allen, then Sabato join in to back them up in a somewhat dishonest way (implying initially that he witnessed the event), I almost wonder if Sabato didn't play a role in organizing this whole thing. He absolutely hates Allen and wants to see him lose this race. As much as I like Sabato, the fact that he would insert himself into this race in such an underhanded way at least leaves me wondering if he might have engineered it.
Sabato may actually be the scumbag behind this whole thing.