Distorted money goes to pro sports. Pro sports athletes get promoted as heroes. People want to emulate their heroes. They buy the shoes their heroes promote. The shoe companies charge outrageous prices. They use the money to secure the athletes to their brand so they can make bank later. How damn ridiculous this all is.

Louisville, if truly implicated, may face the death penalty from the NCAA.



link

The United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced early Tuesday that charges of fraud and corruption have been brought against four current college basketball assistant coaches -- Arizona's Emanuel "Book" Richardson, Auburn's Chuck Person, Oklahoma State's Lamont Evans and USC's Tony Bland. Managers, financial advisers and representatives of a major sportswear company have also been charged with federal crimes in a scandal that has rocked the sport.

"The picture of college basketball painted by the charges is not a pretty one," Joon H. Kim, the acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at a Tuesday afternoon press conference. "Coaches at some of the nation's top programs taking cash bribes, managers and advisers circling blue-chip prospects like coyotes, and employees of a global sportswear company funneling cash to families of high school recruits. ... For the 10 charged men, the madness of college basketball went well beyond the Big Dance in March. Month after month, the defendants exploited the hoop dreams of student-athletes around the country, allegedly treating them as little more than opportunities to enrich themselves through bribery and fraud schemes."

The four basketball coaches were arrested late Monday.
Among other things, Person is accused of accepting payments from an agent who was trying to development a business relationship with some of Auburn's players -- including Austin Wiley. Richardson, Evans and Bland are accused of similar crimes.

Jim Gatto, director of global sports marketing at Adidas, was among those arrested. He's accused of helping funnel approximately $100,000 to the family of an "All-American high school basketball player" to secure the prospect's commitment to a school Adidas sponsors. According to documents, the prospect committed in June. The only "All-American high school basketball player" who committed to a school Adidas sponsors in June is Brian Bowen. He's now enrolled at Louisville.

Louisville coach Rick Pitino was asked about Bowen's commitment in June.
"We got lucky on this one," Pitino said. "I had an AAU director call me and say, 'Would you be interested in a basketball player?' I said ... 'Yeah, I'd be really interested.' But [Bowen and his people] had to come in unofficially, pay for their hotels, pay for their meals. So we spent zero dollars recruiting a five-star athlete who I loved when I saw him play. In my 40-some-odd years of coaching, this is the luckiest I've been."

NBA agent Christian Dawkins was among those arrested. According to documents, he told an unidentified Louisville coach they would have to be "particularly careful" with how they passed money to Bowen and his family because Louisville was already on probation. The Louisville coach agreed, according to documents, and said, "We gotta be very low key."

"I don't know anything about that," Bowen's mother, Carrie Malecke, told the Louisville Courier-Journal on Tuesday. "I don't know anything about that. I'm not aware of anything like that. Not me. I had no idea."

The USAO described the investigation as such: "Since 2015, the FBI and USAO have been investigating the criminal influence of money on coaches and student-athletes who participate in intercollegiate basketball governed by the NCAA. As relevant here, the investigation has revealed numerous instances of bribes paid by athletic advisors, including financial advisors and business managers, among others, to assistant and associate basketball coaches employed by NCAA Division I universities as facilitated by the coaches, in exchange for those coaches exerting influence over student-athletes under their control to retain the services of the bribe-payers once the athletes enter the National Basketball Association."

CBS Sports will be updating this breaking news story.

Nobody is ever getting the death penalty from the NCAA again.

But hopefully the NCAA will show a little consistency and absolutely put the hammer down on some big name programs.

Yeah, that's not cool.

But these charges are from the Feds. Cheating just got a bit more serious.

quote:

Originally posted by YellowJacket:
Nobody is ever getting the death penalty from the NCAA again.

But hopefully the NCAA will show a little consistency and absolutely put the hammer down on some big name programs.

Sports + $$$.....color me surprised It's been going on for years, they just rarely ever get caught.

IMO, the lines are blurred between "professional" sports and college sports, just that the players are less compensated in college. Same money, same corruption, same business model.

Yep this isn't an NCAA violation investigation, it's and FBI Investigation, three coaches arrested, one Adidas Rep arrested, hundreds of thousands of dollars used to buy recruits, doesn't look good

Consider UofL also has the Stripper/Hooker scandal going on where the coaches were providing hookers to recruits during visits.

Link to UL Sex Scandal

UL is going to get buried.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
Yep this isn't an NCAA violation investigation, it's and FBI Investigation, three coaches arrested, one Adidas Rep arrested, hundreds of thousands of dollars used to buy recruits, doesn't look good

Consider UofL also has the Stripper/Hooker scandal going on where the coaches were providing hookers to recruits during visits.

Link to UL Sex Scandal

Maybe all those that aren't getting paid ought to take a knee the next game to protest the unfairness. Oh, I imagine that would probably be a short list.

Sad. I hope they do some time. This is beyond the pale.

While I do live in Lou-a-vul, I really don't give a fig about their sports; I am a graduate of UofL. But what has been happening at UofL, in Academic, Athletics, and the Administration is CRIMINAL.

Academic--money being syphoned from federal medical grants.

Athletics--money being paid to athletes, their families, and sex enterprise workers.

Administration--money being funneled from a non-profit foundation to Administrative officials (former President James Ramsey et al), with forensic accounting investigations begun.

Do you think there might be a pattern and commonality here? FOLLOW THE MONEY!

I'm just waiting for Federal Grand Jury indictments to be handed down in these criminal enterprises under the RICO statutes. These problems at UofL have been going on for well over 15 years now. And the Democrat Louisville Metro Mayor who helps to give them cover is a friggin' idjit.

UofL needs the NCAA "death penalty" to football and basketball, and for the entire University to be placed there on a long-term academic probation by accreditation agencies. Only then will things get cleaned up there.

NCAA Division 1 Basketball and Football are a big money business. But they won't allow the most valuable part of the business, the players, to share in the profits (and make no mistake, there are HUGE profits being made, even if they're not called as such.) Is it any surprise that money isn't sneaking around the wall. I'd be more surprised if it wasn't. Corruption is bound to happen, because the rewards of being corrupt are so high.

They either need to just pay the players, and get it over with, or the professional leagues should start big time developmental leagues, and just let the high school kids go pro when the graduate (as in baseball.)

quote:

Originally posted by 2BobTanner:
While I do live in Lou-a-vul, I really don't give a fig about their sports; I am a graduate of UofL. But what has been happening at UofL, in Academic, Athletics, and the Administration is CRIMINAL.

Academic--money being syphoned from federal medical grants.

Athletics--money being paid to athletes, their families, and sex enterprise workers.

Administration--money being funneled from a non-profit foundation to Administrative officials (former President James Ramsey et al), with forensic accounting investigations begun.

Do you think there might be a pattern and commonality here? FOLLOW THE MONEY!

I'm just waiting for Federal Grand Jury indictments to be handed down in these criminal enterprises under the RICO statutes. These problems at UofL have been going on for well over 15 years now. And the Democrat Louisville Metro Mayor who helps to give them cover is a friggin' idjit.

UofL needs the NCAA "death penalty" to football and basketball, and for the entire University to be placed there on a long-term academic probation by accreditation agencies. Only then will things get cleaned up there.

Wouldn't surprise me one bit given the recent shenanigans in the basketball program - and give what I know about the FB coach Patrino, wouldn't be surprised if that program is a scandal waiting to be unleashed.

I heard the story on the radio this morning and listened closely as the coaches were named. I gave a sigh of relief since I didn't hear Sean Miller's name. A moment later I hear "Arizona." Shit. I have never heard of Book Richardson, but I can't imagine that Miller and the rest of the coaching staff can escape implication.

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
NCAA Division 1 Basketball and Football are a big money business. But they won't allow the most valuable part of the business, the players, to share in the profits (and make no mistake, there are HUGE profits being made, even if they're not called as such.)

+ about a billion.

Everyone involved rakes in cash....except the players, without whom none of it would be possible. Yeah, they get a free education for their risking life* and limb. Good luck finding time to study and attend class, while meeting the time demands of the program. Oh, and be sure to pick a worthless-but-easy course of study so you can keep grades up and stay eligible.

* Yes, life. College of Wooster lost an O-Lineman last week.

CBSSPORTS.COM

College sports headed for reboot in midst of potentially its biggest scandal since 1950s
A corruption scandal involving assistant coaches and a shoe company is only going to get worse
Dennis Dodd


Welcome to a reset of college athletics.
No, not just college basketball in the wake of the Justice Department's seemingly ever-widening investigation, revealed Tuesday, into the sport's culture.
Not even just college football, whose athletes still have to wait three years to turn pro and -- for the most part – cannot yet be monetized when they're in eighth grade.
No, this should be a reset for the whole enterprise. We have to hit the button and start over from here because, in its totality, the corruption scandal that was revealed Tuesday by the United States Attorney's Office is -- and under current rules will always be -- out of the reach of the NCAA.
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Some folks are going to jail, not just being blackballed with a show cause penalty.
This isn't a postseason ban, this is saying goodbye to your wife and kids for a few years.
This isn't just losing your job, this is having your lunch served through a slit in your cell door.
How's that for branding college athletics, Mark Emmert?
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We -- media, administrators, some fans -- all knew some form of the graft that was alleged Tuesday has been going on for years. If a college basketball program could get just one guy, it could turn things around. Same for an apparel company.
We just couldn't prove it.
The Justice Department has laid it out in excruciating detail.
"For the defendants charged today, the madness of college basketball went well beyond March," U.S. Attorney Joon Kim said.

This scandal is bigger than Miami, USC, Ohio State, Louisville, Baylor, pretty much anything you can think of in recent memory. (We leave out Penn State because wrongdoers were accused, tried and convicted of crimes against humanity. The NCAA's subsequent overreach in penalizing the school was outside even the association's enforcement arm.)
Those schools were single entities. This is college athletics on trial. There's not a damn thing the NCAA can do about it except piggy back the government's investigation and apply its own penalties.
In the end, the most compelling piece is the government investigating crimes, not the NCAA nit-picking a rule book.
Yes, college athletes needs a reboot. The last time there was a criminal investigation this big, the NCAA enforcement division was being created.

In the early 1950s, a massive point-shaving scandal involved 33 players allegedly fixing 86 games at seven schools in 17 states.
It was out of that mess the NCAA instituted the enforcement staff that polices things today. The message then from then-executive director Walter Byers might as well be used now: If fans can't trust the legitimacy of the games they're watching, what's the point?
That's where we are again, 65 years later.
"We don't have enough transparency," said Lynn Lashbrook, a Portland, Oregon, sports management consultant. "Checks and balances have eroded. It's an ethical compass. Your mom taught you right and wrong. We've lost that ethical compass."
Lashbrook has been a college coach, scout, compliance director, athletic director and agent in a career that has spanned more than 30 years.
"As an agent, I've watched how difficult it is to get in the room [for a basketball player]. It's a closed circuit," he said. "Basketball is the most vulnerable, but it would be very naïve to think this isn't the tip of the iceberg."
What you saw Tuesday was the Justice Department's Chapter 1 of "War and Peace." There is much more to come from the feds. They didn't spend all this time and money to indict four assistant coaches and arrest 10 people.
We already know from the record that they coerced a financial adviser to roll on suspected coaches.
We're not talking about hardened criminals here. We're talking about white-collar money launderers who preyed on teenagers.
They're likely to do anything to save their asses.
There will be those who call for players to be paid. You know, over the table. There is no amount of money that can root out the culture that has been established in college basketball.
If they all get $10,000, then why not $20,000? The shoe companies can always match. That sort of economy started with Sonny Vaccaro and Nike and Michael Jordan in the 1980s. Since then, the culture went underground and started a new illegal economy.
College football is headed the same way. The insidious third parties referenced by the feds on Tuesday are a growing culture in college football.
The three top shoe companies (Nike, Adidas and Under Armour) effectively control the seven-on-seven circuit. Because of modern offenses, one or two players -- like basketball -- can change the fortunes of a football team, too.
Like basketball, skill players are being targeted as high school freshmen or earlier. This summer, I watched a group of wide-eyed grade-school and high school athletes who had paid $1,500 to participate in a weekend football quarterback camp. For the money, they got instruction from some of college football's most well-known quarterbacks and at least one rookie pro.
That wasn't the surprise. It's what was on the sidelines -- a marketer from a major apparel company and a high-powered NFL agent -- that raised questions.
What was an NFL agent doing there if not to troll for future clients?
The one significant firewall is that three years in residence requirement before turning pro. Basketball's one-and-done rule is little more than a required waiting room before going to the NBA.
Byers himself saw the conflict later in life. He advocated for an NCAA "open division" where players could be compensated.
"I don't think the fabric of higher education as we believe in it and would like to see it function in this country can stand the strain of big-time intercollegiate athletics and maintain its integrity," Byers told Sports Illustrated before his death two years ago.
Summing it up, FBI assistant director in charge Bill Sweeney said Tuesday, "We have a lot more work to do,"
He then provided a phone number to call for those who know of more federal crimes. Behind him was an assistant named "Capone."
When was the last time you heard any of that in college athletics scandal?
Dennis Dodd

Local radio is reporting that Coach Pitino and the UofL athletics director will probably be fired today. We shall see.

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
Local radio is reporting that Coach Pitino and the UofL athletics director will probably be fired today. We shall see.

If so, then it is long overdue.

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
NCAA Division 1 Basketball and Football are a big money business. But they won't allow the most valuable part of the business, the players, to share in the profits (and make no mistake, there are HUGE profits being made, even if they're not called as such.) Is it any surprise that money isn't sneaking around the wall. I'd be more surprised if it wasn't. Corruption is bound to happen, because the rewards of being corrupt are so high.

They either need to just pay the players, and get it over with, or the professional leagues should start big time developmental leagues, and just let the high school kids go pro when the graduate (as in baseball.)

Indeed.

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
Local radio is reporting that Coach Pitino and the UofL athletics director will probably be fired today. We shall see.

Jurich was fired today and apparently he refused to fire Pitino, subsequently Pitino was fired.

UofL has to protect itself from the death penalty, they were on probation already for several NCAA violations, this is major

According to the FBI report UofL was University 10, let that sink in, 10....