How do y'all think we were attracting top 100 recruits in the past? How do y'all think every school has done it for the past 50 year? Every single one.
The argument I hear of winning cures all is false. Kansas, Duke, Kentucky are the teams you'd think wouldn't need to play dirty for teams, but what are we seeing with this investigation? Kansas paid De Sousa and Preston. Bill Self was aware of it. Lousiville paid Bowen and was aware of it. Duke paid Bagley. Winning doesn't matter. The only way to get top recruits is to pay them some sort of extra benefit. Obviously, there are exceptions to this rule, but out of the Top 100 maybe 90% are paid something.
Every single coach knows how this works. Every single AD knows. All the boosters know. The people close to "the scene" know. The FBI knows. And now we're starting to know as well.
The only thing winning has done for these programs is its allowed their cheating to proliferate because everyone also knows the NCAA is a joke. It isn't respected by any of these institutions as an authority. Everyone in the NCAA knows as well as everyone else how much cheating is taking place. The power 5 conferences are bigger than the NCAA. The NCAA is permitted to serve two purposes and those are:
1. grant validity to these institutions success by performing their investigations and concluding them without significant penalty
2. preserve amateur status for the athletes
Take a look at the list of NCAABB champions. You need to go back to 1963 to find a team that *might* be clean who won it all. Every single team on that list has been accused of well documented impropriety. The NCAA has done their job of not punishing the winning and revenue teams, and in maintaining the facade that these are amateur athletes.
Imagine the financial consequences if the payments and benefits to players was out in the open. What would change? The players will continue getting paid like they always have. The difference will be that without amateurism the institutions won't be able to exploit these players as they have. They'll need to pay them for commercial appearances, and to use their likeness. The players will be able to organize and have collective bargaining powers. The NCAAs purpose isn't to prevent teams from cheating, its to preserve their monopoly.
From a revenue perspective the NCAA umbrella is larger than the pro teams, and in some cases combined. For example, the NCAA has retail sales that surpass the NFL and NBA combined. Multiple networks and media platforms exist under the umbrella. What is the difference between pro sports leagues and the NCAA? Nothing, other than this idea of amateurism, which is a false notion.
Succeeding in the NCAA is no different than succeeding in a pro league, and you can't expect to win when you're being outspent by your opponents.