HOWIE LINDSEY
calm. Fans and media started to wonder if the
FBI’s tough talk of having college basketball’s
“playbook” was just bluster.
Then, in early February, all hell broke loose.
Yahoo Sports writers Pete Thamel and Pat
Forde got ahold of some of the FBI’s uncovered
documents.
Thamel and Forde wrote, “While three criminal
cases tied to the investigation may take years
to play out, the documents viewed by Yahoo
revealed the extent of the potential NCAA
ramifications from the case. The documents
show an underground recruiting operation that
could create NCAA rules issues – both current and
retroactive – for at least 20 Division I basketball
programs and more than 25 players.”
One of the documents was a spreadsheet
snagged during a raid of a sports agency with
names, dates and amounts of money “loaned”
to high school and college players, including
Kentucky’s Bam Adebayo, NC State’s Dennis
Smith Jr. and Yahoo also uncovered emails that
seemed to indicate assistant coaches at Michigan
State, Indiana and others bidding on Bowen, the
recruit that ended up at Louisville.
ESPN’s Mark Schlabach cited sources that
indicated Arizona coach Sean Miller was recorded
on a FBI wiretap arranging $100,000 for recruit
DeAndre Ayton.
The scandal has already brought down Pitino
and Miller and is threatening to bring down
Michigan State’s Tom Izzo as well. And who else?
Veteran writer Dan Wetzel told Fox Sports he
believes 20 Power-5 head coaches will lose their
jobs before the scandal is done.
If that’s true, the entire system of college
basketball recruiting will have to change. All of
it. From the summer tournaments in Las Vegas
to the high school gyms across the country, if the
NCAA is serious about cleaning up its mess, the
whole lot will have to change.
And the scary thing for the NCAA? The
information that has leaked out so far has all
been from one agent’s office. What about the
other 15 agencies doing business in much the
same manner?
Mark Emmert was on CBS and was asked about
the mess in college basketball. He said change
is on the way. “Following the Southern District
of New York’s indictments last year, the NCAA
Board of Governors and I formed the independent
Commission on College Basketball, chaired by
Condoleezza Rice, to provide recommendations
on how to clean up the sport. With these latest
allegations, it’s clear this work is more important
now than ever. The Board and I are completely
committed to making transformational changes
to the game and ensuring all involved in
college basketball do so with integrity. We also
will continue to cooperate with the efforts of
federal prosecutors to identify and punish the
unscrupulous parties seeking to exploit the system
through criminal acts.”
As a longtime observer of th e recruiting process
each summer, I have a few notes for Emmert
and Rice:
The NCAA must remove the shoe companies
from the recruiting process. Removing shoe
company sponsorships from AAU and high school
teams would be a good place to start.
“WHAT
HAPPENS IN
VEGAS, STAYS
IN VEGAS,”
AN ASSISTANT
COACH SAID
WITH A SMIRK.
TURNS OUT
IT DOESN’T.
The NCAA must remove parents and assistant
coaches from the pockets of agents. Getting the
NBA to modify its one-and-done rule would
help this issue.
CBS’ Gary Parrish believes the NCAA should
allow college athletes to sign with agents above
board: “The fix really is simple. What the NCAA
should do is eliminate the black market by allowing
student-athletes to secure representation and
accept fair-market value in this billion-dollar
industry where just about everybody connected
to the biggest sports in the biggest conferences
are legally getting rich but them.”
The NCAA must figure out a way to let the elite
talent head to the pros while keeping enough
talent to make college basketball fun to watch.
None of that will be easy, especially considering
public perception casts the NCAA’s favorability
rating somewhere between the NRA and Congress.
And over the next two years as these cases
unfold, the NCAA must deal with the fall out of
multiple elite coaches losing their jobs thanks to
the investigation headed by the FBI.
College basketball won’t be the same after this
is all done. And that’s probably a good thing.
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