FBI College Basketball Corruption Investigation
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Just a refresher for people who may have forgotten one of the many ways Kansas has gotten away with paying players over the years ...
Kansas employees illegally gave premium tickets, including very lucrative postseason tickets, to a group of KU supporters, which included Roger Morningstar, father of KU player, Brady Morningstar. The group then sold the tickets and kept the profits, which amounted to over one million dollars just from one NCAA tournament alone. Morningstar, personally, made hundreds of thousands (I've seen as much as $800,000) off of this arrangement.
This was also a way to funnel tickets and money to the Pump Brothers, who ran an AAU program that sent their top players to Kansas. Morningstar coached one of the Pump Brothers' summer league teams. Ronnie Chalmers, Mario Chalmers' dad and KU assistant coach, also coached one of the Pump Brothers' summer league teams.
Altogether, nine players from the Pump Brothers' AAU teams ended up playing for Kansas, including Mario Chalmers, David Padgett, Omar Wilkes, Tyrel Reed, Elijah Johnson, Jeff Withey and Travis Releford.
So here is where this gets even more interesting to Illinois fans. When Sherron Collins showed up at Kansas, he immediately became roommates and best friends with Brady Morningstar. He moved in with the Morningstar family, who housed, fed, and provided regular plane tickets to Collins to fly back and forth to Chicago to see his infant son.
So Collins was supported by Roger Morningstar, through his son Brady, who was one of his teammates. All this while Morningstar was making hundreds of thousands of dollars off the KU ticket scandal, where he and his business partners where given premium tickets directly by Kansas employees and then resold them for millions of dollars in profits.
Oh, and "coincidentally" Roger Morningstar also sold Bill Self his house. But I'm sure Self didn't know anything about any of this
And guess, what? Now Sherron Collins also lives in Lawrence (as of this 2017 article linked below).
http://www.espn.com/college-sports/news/story?id=5223151
http://www2.kusports.com/news/2010/mar/04/morningstar-reminisces/
http://www.kansascity.com/sports/college/big-12/university-of-kansas/article181149716.html
Kansas employees illegally gave premium tickets, including very lucrative postseason tickets, to a group of KU supporters, which included Roger Morningstar, father of KU player, Brady Morningstar. The group then sold the tickets and kept the profits, which amounted to over one million dollars just from one NCAA tournament alone. Morningstar, personally, made hundreds of thousands (I've seen as much as $800,000) off of this arrangement.
This was also a way to funnel tickets and money to the Pump Brothers, who ran an AAU program that sent their top players to Kansas. Morningstar coached one of the Pump Brothers' summer league teams. Ronnie Chalmers, Mario Chalmers' dad and KU assistant coach, also coached one of the Pump Brothers' summer league teams.
Altogether, nine players from the Pump Brothers' AAU teams ended up playing for Kansas, including Mario Chalmers, David Padgett, Omar Wilkes, Tyrel Reed, Elijah Johnson, Jeff Withey and Travis Releford.
So here is where this gets even more interesting to Illinois fans. When Sherron Collins showed up at Kansas, he immediately became roommates and best friends with Brady Morningstar. He moved in with the Morningstar family, who housed, fed, and provided regular plane tickets to Collins to fly back and forth to Chicago to see his infant son.
So Collins was supported by Roger Morningstar, through his son Brady, who was one of his teammates. All this while Morningstar was making hundreds of thousands of dollars off the KU ticket scandal, where he and his business partners where given premium tickets directly by Kansas employees and then resold them for millions of dollars in profits.
Oh, and "coincidentally" Roger Morningstar also sold Bill Self his house. But I'm sure Self didn't know anything about any of this
And guess, what? Now Sherron Collins also lives in Lawrence (as of this 2017 article linked below).
http://www.espn.com/college-sports/news/story?id=5223151
http://www2.kusports.com/news/2010/mar/04/morningstar-reminisces/
http://www.kansascity.com/sports/college/big-12/university-of-kansas/article181149716.html
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And every player at Oregon in the last 10 years has gone there because of Nike. Shoe and sports apparel company influence on college recruiting (and AAU programs) is here to stay.
It's a joke. But of course, that is the official rationale for this waste of taxpayer money in the first place, that cheating coaches were defrauding the Universities of their honest services.
I have personal knowledge of a Big Ten football program's players doing the same thing, fencing the tickets through friends. They didn't make THAT kind of money, but it just goes to show how universal this is and is always going to be so long as there is an artificial market restriction. There is absolutely nothing legally or morally wrong with giving away tickets to friends of the program. Nothing.
And by the way, the program I'm referencing doesn't have a reputation for cheating at all. (It's not us.)
(Would it be like a violation of board rules or something to say? I have no problem naming the team, all these players have long since graduated)
That was actually one of the biggest violations the NCAA cited Illinois for in 1990 when they dropped the hammer on the program - giving away tickets.
"But the school`s relief was tempered. Instead of Illinois` being found guilty of the major allegations, the committee cited violations self-reported by the school to the NCAA. Those included misuse of complimentary tickets"
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/...rol-illinois-assistant-coach-minor-violations
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Also, in the case of Kansas, some of the KU employees involved in the ticket scandal did time in Prison. So apparently, there was something legally wrong with what they did:
"A former associate director in charge of the University of Kansas ticket office and "gatekeeper" for stolen tickets was sentenced Thursday to 57 months in prison for her role in the $2 million conspiracy.
"Prosecutors accused Charlette Blubaugh, 44, of providing tickets for basketball and football games to others who sold them for personal profit.
"Blubaugh and her husband, Thomas, both of Medford, Okla., pleaded guilty in January to a single count of conspiracy to defraud the United States through wire fraud, tax obstruction and interstate transportation of stolen property.
"She also was sentenced to pay a share of the more than $2 million in restitution, along with others convicted in the conspiracy, and was ordered to spend three years under court supervision once she is released from prison.
"Her husband has been sentenced to a 46-month prison term."
http://www.espn.com/college-sports/news/story?id=6353894
"A former associate director in charge of the University of Kansas ticket office and "gatekeeper" for stolen tickets was sentenced Thursday to 57 months in prison for her role in the $2 million conspiracy.
"Prosecutors accused Charlette Blubaugh, 44, of providing tickets for basketball and football games to others who sold them for personal profit.
"Blubaugh and her husband, Thomas, both of Medford, Okla., pleaded guilty in January to a single count of conspiracy to defraud the United States through wire fraud, tax obstruction and interstate transportation of stolen property.
"She also was sentenced to pay a share of the more than $2 million in restitution, along with others convicted in the conspiracy, and was ordered to spend three years under court supervision once she is released from prison.
"Her husband has been sentenced to a 46-month prison term."
http://www.espn.com/college-sports/news/story?id=6353894
Well, you can't just steal them from the athletic department lol
You give it to a friend, the friend sells it on ebay, and the friend and the player split the money.
My brother was the friend. He was also an NCAA athlete at the time, but DIII so no one cares.
...or you sign some Johnny Manziel stuff, give it to your friend, he sells it and you party like Rock Stars for a couple nights and sit out a game or two the next season.
You don't think the Kansas Athletic Department was aware that millions of dollars in tickets were being given to key boosters affiliated with the program, who were then selling them on the secondary market and giving them to AAU coaches? This occurred for a number of years and involved premium seats for very in-demand NCAA tournament games.
It is clear to me that these low-level employees were the fall guys for the program. I'm sure they have been well taken care of after their release from prison.
They were victimized by having all of these highly-recruited basketball players steered to their program by shoe companies :tsk:
If they were victims, what does that make the schools who didn't get the recruits to play for their team and win games for them?
Lol this whole amateurism charade is getting to a tipping point. I have to wonder what the point of it is really. Is it the sanctity of being able to call the players "student athletes"? I really can't understand the thinking behind people who fight tooth and nail against the possibility of paying the players legally or letting them profit off their likeness legally when the NCAAMB is a BILLION dollar business and they all are going to get paid anyways illegally!
You answered your own question. It is a BILLION dollar business. The schools and the NCAA want to keep it all to themselves.
100%, but I've never understood why some fans will fight to the death to ensure college athletes never get paid. At least it seems like that sometimes.
So who is making all the money? Regulators? A few coaches? You act as if there are shareholders taking in millions and millions.
The money is used to improve facilities and supplement non-revenue sports. Yes high profile coaches get paid.
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They are getting paid. Check the value of their tuition, room, board, etc. Not sure what you paid, but paying for my three kids for 4 years is a hefty sum. If they choose to not value that, then that is on them and there are alternatives to college to play ball.
That kind of misrepresents the issue. It's not that the degree isn't valuable it's that the players are worth more to the university and the NCAA than what a degree is worth (as in monetarily). For example, Trae Young was in that NCAA tournament for a reason and it wasn't because Oklahoma was good.
Exactly. It’s about fair market value and opportunity. How many people here are willing to be worth millions for their company yet be paid like they are worth thousands?
How many people want to be required to turn down an endorsement deal that could immediately, positively impact you and your family financially?
Especially when we’re talking about sports and the window to capitalize on your talent/likeness is so limited anyway.
I’ll hang up and listen for my answer.
Might wanna find someone other than "football Johnny" to sign stuff if u want to party like a rock star ... his stuff prolly isn't worth a whole lot nowadays.
Deleted member 29907
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So you're saying Trae Young is not going to make good money in his professional life? Also, don't confuse revenue with profit. The argument was if they should be paid - I am stating by those items mentioned they are. And it benefits athletes who's sport (many) or status in the game (bench warmers on scholly) do not make money for the NCAA. There are choices if they don't care about a degree and feel they can earn money right out of high school. Counter point to all of that, however, is the discussion in another thread that Jaylon Tate is making money in Canada playing ball - I'd be hard pressed to say his 4 years of college play didn't play a big role in that.
All that being said I don't think its worth turning this thread into this age old argument - so feel free to respond but I'll stop my part here. Thanks.
These were Rose Bowl tickets. Maybe that's handled differently. Or maybe it was just that school, I dunno. But lots of players were making hundreds of dollars apiece. And good for them, it was a clever idea.
It is both undeniably true that players are compensated in the form of a ludicrously priced education as well as a variety of expenses, and also really bizarre to say that seeking to capitalize on their enormous economic value they possess for a very limited period in their lives represents "choosing not to value" the benefits they're already receiving.
Being committed to a college education and seeking the full value of your labor are not mutually exclusive in any way, shape or form.
And let's not be blind to the way in which the programs themselves devalue the players degrees by pressuring them into the easiest, least prestigious, least valuable, and thus least interfering with "optional" over-hours sports work classes and majors.
Senator, we're both a part of the same hypocrisy.
An Olympic model in which student-athletes are free to pursue outside moneymaking opportunities either in endorsements or whatever else while still just getting their scholarship and nothing extra from the schools would not run afoul of Title IX.
We should not be blind to the implications though. Boosters will fence massive sums of money through sham endorsement deals. This money will eat directly into the donations that prop up athletic departments. Ideally this drain mostly stops the insane price escalation of coaching salaries and gold plated mostly useless facilities, but it will almost certainly result in some non-revenue sports being shut down as well.
But college sports, revenue and non-revenue, will not be destroyed. And it will stand on a morally sound footing for the first time in a solid century.
And my guess is that it would actually equalize the talent pool, at least as it pertains to a school like Illinois. The marginal value of an extra 5-star recruit is much, much higher here than it is at Kentucky.
That's the thing. Players will always find a way to make more money.
I had a friend who was a star high school football player for a team in the CPL. During the city championship, someone paid him to throw the game and he intentionally fumbled twice.
As we know, football players at Northwestern were caught point shaving. If it can happen at Northwestern, it can happen anywhere.
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