FBI College Basketball Corruption Investigation

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#751      

Calvin

C
Calvin
bombayIllini said:
Meet Marty Blazer, the Pittsburgh-area man the FBI flipped to upend college basketball
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Reading that article makes me think BU is in good shape for a number of reasons (easy for me to say).

1. There is a LOT of fraud and shady business dealings going on around these activities --serious stuff like agents stealing player's money, and covering it up by moving money around with other clients. There are bribes to government officials. It would seem to me the FBI is most concerned with these headline-grabbing charges, which they investigated and where they have a solid case.

2. The timeline of the field work. From the article: "At the first March 3, 2016, meeting Mr. Dawkins said the good thing about working with assistant coaches like Mr. Evans is that 'the head coach ... ain't willing to [take bribes] 'cause they're making too much money. And it's too risky,' according to the complaint."

Too me, this reinforces that every HC know the game, and they stay out of the line of fire. You hire an assistant because he gets things done and has connections. You don't ask a million questions about how he got them because the profession and the black market issues demand that you don't.

That said, the 4 named Universities are going to be under tremendous pressure to explain how this happened so they can say it won't happen again. In Pitino's case, this was just the straw that broke the camel's back --he's already at high risk of having his NC vacated, and he's made the university look foolish too many times.

The other 3, and any that get named later, will have to weigh the circumstances. How much outrage? How culpable did the HC look? etc.

I can tell you this, though, if I'm an AD, I'm going to tell the president that IF you fire a guy today, the market for coaches is an empty shelf and a discount bin with all the discounts taken off. You can kiss those ticket sales, merchandise sales, and booster money goodbye for a few years.

Obviously, it's hard to say where it all lands, but I could see this being contained to only those cases where the evidence is strong, and not spilling over to those who should have known better, but drew a line in the sand to not actively participate.
 
#752      

Calvin

C
Calvin
Robert68 said:
Vitale & the rest of the hoops media is playing the same role the baseball media did when the steroid scandal broke loose in MLB. When you are riding on the gravy train, the one thing you don't do is spill the gravy. Vitale and others have made a great living for themselves because of the sport. I'm sure he knew some things that were going on even from his time spent in coaching. But when that is where your big checks are coming from, pretty easy to turn a blind eye.

One side thing I wonder here, is will there be any connection to NCAA corporate in any of this. The NCAA has so many conflicts of interest in trying to rule a sport while having a huge vested interest in said sport. I won't be surprised if someone gets popped at that level.
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+1 on the steroid analogy.

Often times, when there's a PR storm like this, congress gets involved. It wouldn't surprise me to see them put new laws in place that force the universities to get their $#@! together, put it in a backpack, so it's all together. Or maybe a committee is formed and it's business as usual --who knows
 
#755      

Ga65

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Ga65
UCLA and Kansas have Adidas contracts. Any players there worth $150k?
 
#757      

PNWIllini

P
PNW
PNWIllini
Centennialillini said:
None of you will remember this but Ill. Gov Kerner went to jail back in the 60s for accepting a bribe. How did they catch him, you ask. Because the lady who bribed him took it off her income taxes as a business expense. I wished I was joking.

I have read some east coast stories on this and apparently the feds were taking down a financial adviser who had stolen money from his NBA clients. In the course of the investigation they asked him how he got to know all these NBA players and he said that he paid off assistants to steer players to him. The feds then did what the feds do best, they flipped him. This proves 2 things:

People will sell out their mother to stay out of jail

Professional people are probably not intellectually prepared to serve time
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Was that one the shoebox in the closet filled with 100's? Or was that another one.

Someone needs to do a wiki on Illinois bribery scandals some time. I lived there 20 years, back in the 70s and 80s, and I am rapidly forgetting. Otto Kerner, Dan Walker, Paul Powell. So many bribes, so little time.
 
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#761      

RedRocksIllini

RedRocksIllini
Morrison, CO
RedRocksIllini
PNWIllini said:
Was that one the shoebox in the closet filled with 100's? Or was that another one.

Someone needs to do a wiki on Illinois bribery scandals some time. I lived there 20 years, back in the 70s and 80s, and I am rapidly forgetting. Otto Kerner, Dan Walker, Paul Powell. So many sacks of cash, so little time.
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Be much easier to do a wiki on Illinois governors who haven't spent time in jail. Have there been any? Ever?
 
#762      

EJ33

E
San Francisco
EJ33
RedRocksIllini said:
The steroid scandal is a good analogy. Just like the steroid scandal, the media knew and so did the fans (us). Nobody should be surprised by any of this and to say otherwise is totally false. Dakich claiming Michigan is totally clean or Vitale pretending to be shocked or anybody here trying to claim Illinois is somehow above this sort of thing is just delusional. Given the amounts of money in and around these "amateur" sports coupled with the fact that the people who generate that money (athletes) aren't supposed to get any of that money, the NCAA is probably the perfect structure for this sort of behavior.
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We have evidence that Illinois is not cheating at a very high level - look at our recruiting in football and basketball over the last several years. It'd be a lot better if we were good at cheating.
 
#764      

IlliniBrave75

IlliniBrave75
IlliniBrave75
Darren Rovell @darrenrovell
·
11m
Details on feds serving Nike with a subpoena in college basketball bribery probe (link: http://es.pn/2fUlUDR) es.pn/2fUlUDR, first reported by @DarrenHeitner

Sources: Nike division served with subpoena
espn.com
 
#766      

Yost

Y
Yost
PNWIllini said:
Was that one the shoebox in the closet filled with 100's? Or was that another one.

Someone needs to do a wiki on Illinois bribery scandals some time. I lived there 20 years, back in the 70s and 80s, and I am rapidly forgetting. Otto Kerner, Dan Walker, Paul Powell. So many sacks of cash, so little time.
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Dan Walker wasn't bribery. He committed bank fraud after he was out of office. My favorite story was that legislators used to take bribes on the floor of the General Assembly. Something like $10 for a yea vote and $25 for a nay.
 
#770      

mattcoldagelli

mattcoldagelli
The Transfer Portal with Do Not Contact Tag
mattcoldagelli
Calvin said:
Love it. Relentless at explaining the problem and not shy about where the blame lies.

http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/20841877/until-ncaa-solves-money-problem-pays-athletes-problems-continue
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He's a million percent right, of course.

When have you ever heard of a coach being steered to an agent? When have you ever heard of bribes to get a coach to accept a job? When have you ever heard of a bribe to get an athletic director to switch schools? You don't hear such things because those people are allowed to be paid in a free market. It is an aboveboard business, and it works in an orderly fashion. There are contracts with contract remedies. That pesky free market works incredibly well and efficiently for everyone else; it is foolish to assert that it would not work just as well for college athletes. After all, these schools know exactly whom to recruit and whom to play the most minutes in the games. They know whom to pay and how much.
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#772      

Deleted member 10676

D
Guest
Deleted member 10676
Family 1 takes the Brian Bowen's mom approach. Some of the comments are interesting, I'm pretty sure Little was one of the players numbered.

Jeff Borzello‏Verified account @jeffborzello 13m13 minutes ago
Jeff Borzello Retweeted 1 Family
Nassir Little's AAU program makes statement regarding rumors swirling in recent days.
https://twitter.com/1FamilyHoops/status/913378499087527936
 
#774      

Smacko

S
Lexington, KY
Smacko
miketherevelator said:
Family 1 takes the Brian Bowen's mom approach. Some of the comments are interesting, I'm pretty sure Little was one of the players numbered.

Jeff Borzello‏Verified account @jeffborzello 13m13 minutes ago
Jeff Borzello Retweeted 1 Family
Nassir Little's AAU program makes statement regarding rumors swirling in recent days.
https://twitter.com/1FamilyHoops/status/913378499087527936
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Wasn't this team one of the groups that the FBI raided yesterday?
 
#775      

Illiini

Illiini
In the land of the Nittany Lion
Illiini
RedRocksIllini said:
Be much easier to do a wiki on Illinois governors who haven't spent time in jail. Have there been any? Ever?
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Back when Governor's State University was a new experimental "senior university", an experiment that eventually failed to maintain its original high quality origins (but that's another story0, there was a minor crisis of sorts. The school was named Governors State to honor not just one Illinois governor but all in its history, and the atrium of its main building was ringed by brass plaques commemorating each governor in the state's history.

This being circa 1975, however, Otto Kerner was going to jail for whatever it was, and there were concerns about putting his plaque on the wall. But it was decided that, well, he was a governor and that by deciding on whether to put up his plaque would force future university committees to make decisions on (a) whether those governors who had a plaque put up in their honor went to jail should have the plaque taken down, and (b) just what would constitute an offense severe enough to warrant not putting up or removing a plaque in the future, should a governor be caught up in some scandal. It was decided to put Otto Kerner's plaque up. A cop-out perhaps, but that's why they're there.
 
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