Looks like a new mega-scandal has burst on the college basketball scene. I’ve just started paying attention to it. Will describe a few articles on the fiasco and then let it sit for a while before discussing it in more detail.
The feds indicted assistant coaches from four named colleges with two more unnamed schools mentioned, with sufficient detail to allow guesses as to which school’s coaches will next face a perp walk.
Charges are described in Yahoo Sports on 9/26/17: FBI brings Armageddon to college basketball, and its’ just the tip of the iceberg.
Allegations are large payments going to promising high school recruits to get them attending particular schools. Named schools are Arizona, Auburn, Oklahoma State, and USC.
The feds claim to have wiretapped calls, written documents, and documented financial transactions. I’ll bet they have photographs of cash handoffs and tapes of all the many meetings.
Reading between the lines of the public comments and indictments, the author thinks there are more charges for more schools on the way.
9/26/17 – Yahoo! Sports – FBI probe uncovers massive college basketball scandal snaring big-time programs. Article says the criminal complaint alleges a big-time athletic wear company paid a specific high school student $100,000 to attend a specific college.
Article also says there have been rumors for “generations” of under-the-table payments in college basketball. Article puts the level of certainty of those stories at the level of “worst-kept secret” in the basketball world.
This article has links to the three indictments included in the article. Since one of them is described as being 200 pages long, I don’t plan to read them anytime soon.
More articles:
9/27/17 – Wall Street Journal – The Morning Risk Report – NCAA Case Revives Sports Corruption Debate – Article suggests there are long-term corruption issues in college sports. This would appear to be merely the latest iteration.
10/1/17 – Wall Street Journal – The Man Who Exposed College Basketball – A man in trouble with the feds for securities issues has been cooperating with the feds for three years. Three years.
That would mean that two or three years of all his meetings have been photographed and recorded. Two or three years of all his phone calls being recorded and his emails logged. Can you image the volume of evidence in the storage lockers?
That would be several years of meetings with a number of intermediaries who made allegedly illicit contacts with basketball coaches. Said intermediaries have now been indicted. Oh, the coaches have been indicted, too.
I haven’t bothered to trace all the names in the article through the full article, but it sure seems like everyone this informant worked with has been indicted. At least everyone mentioned in the article has been indicted.
Entertaining descriptions are that the FBI was so deep into running this investigation that several agents (at least two) were brought into meetings, introduced as a partner or financier for additional bribes.
Article is put together in such as way as to not give any hint of any meetings other than those which are related to these specific indictments. Of course, that may be intentional to protect other ongoing investigations, with more indictments to follow.
This might just fizzle away, but more likely is this story will be alive for quite a while.