JJxvi said:

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It could be argued that the undoubtedly squeaky clean, federally funded institutions like Texas A&M, that play by all the rules, both NCAA and the law of land, are who gets harmed and defrauded since they aren't able to compete on a level playing field with the rest who use their illegal corruption and inducements.

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Further, moving money illegally allows recipients to avoid paying taxes. If there is widespread corruption, then this could be a significant amount of money. Even if not widespread, this investigation will have a chilling effect on potential criminal activity.

Nailing these folks for tax evasion isn't going to bring down the whole system though. That's been the beauty of the whole thing the whole time, a lot of the "dirty" stuff isn't illegal. Or at least wasn't, I guess they're trying to say it is now.

Bluecat_Aggie94 said:

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1) "The NCAA had no idea" is not true. They may not have been intimately involved with the investigations, but they knew one was going on. Good chance we will ultimately find out they are the ones that asked for it.

2) Nike and football will implicated soon.

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I think you're wrong on both counts.

The feds got involved tangentially thru an SEC (securities, not footbawl) investigation, not from an NCAA tip, and I've seen reports that the NCAA was unaware, may have even been from the FBI's news conference.

And football cheating is an entirely different scheme than basketball. I doubt this investigation becomes a significant issue for football.

I guess it depends on how far it really goes on if it's worth all the money being spent on it.

Anyway, it's not a huge complaint because the system has been broken for years and we spend plenty of taxpayer money on dumb stuff anyway that we might as well spend it on something I care about.

I just think it'll be kind of odd if, of all the ways to do it, it's the FBI that takes down college basketball.

Bilas has been calling it a cartel for years, and there are a lot of structural similarities.

DTP02 said:

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And football cheating is an entirely different scheme than basketball. I doubt this investigation becomes a significant issue for football.

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Yeah, I'd agree here. There aren't as many middle men in football. A lot more booster-to-athlete direct transactions.

Guitarsoup said:

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I've heard we're in the clear.

Good Aggie Hunting said:

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Looks like neither Pitino nor Jurich were fired. They were placed on administrative leave (Pitino no pay, Jurich pay).

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Correct.

WildcatAg said:

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Please, Please, Please, Please, Please let this be true

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BREAKING NEWS: Rick Pitino OUT at #Louisville. Tom Crean could emerge as interim head coach candidate.

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Frying pan into fire?

bobinator said:

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I guess it depends on how far it really goes on if it's worth all the money being spent on it.

Anyway, it's not a huge complaint because the system has been broken for years and we spend plenty of taxpayer money on dumb stuff anyway that we might as well spend it on something I care about.

I just think it'll be kind of odd if, of all the ways to do it, it's the FBI that takes down college basketball.

Bilas has been calling it a cartel for years, and there are a lot of structural similarities.

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One group of the victims are any companies, financial advisors, agents, coaches, schools who do actually mostly operate within the rules. If you are a cynic then you'll say none exist. But maybe there are a few generally honest folks out there.

Another group of victims in my opinion has been the college athletes themselves, some of whom do deserve the 100K (or more) based on what the schools make off of them. Which is kind of a different topic, yet one of the roots of what has happened here.

Also, ignoring corruption is never a good thing. Corruption in its many forms (bribery, embezzlement, fraud, etc.) almost always eventually has a significant negative impact on a market economy and society if left unchecked.

You are right that perhaps of all the corrupted systems out there, maybe NCAA college basketball athletics didn't deserve to get highest priority.

But let's face the facts. If college athletics is ever going to get cleaned up, it probably needed some agency like the FBI with real teeth to come in and act like a bull in the china shop and break a bunch of plates. Whether this does actually change anything long term, we'll see. But the NCAA itself was seemingly inadequate to do so.

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and I've seen reports that the NCAA was unaware,

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Yeah, I'm gonna call bs on those reports. They had no idea that big shoe companies were committing all sorts of federal crimes with mbb coaches?! I guess they had all their resources focused and committed on busting YouTube celebrities that happen to play college sports. Eff the NCAA.

All of those Turge haters, better thank their lucky stars he was our HC.

CoolAggie said:

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Quote:

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and I've seen reports that the NCAA was unaware,

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Yeah, I'm gonna call bs on those reports. They had no idea that big shoe companies were committing all sorts of federal crimes with mbb coaches?! I guess they had all their resources focused and committed on busting YouTube celebrities that happen to play college sports. Eff the NCAA.

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It is true the Southern District of NY didn't inform the NCAA until the day the story broke.


They don't ***** around.

The NCAA was inadequate to do so because they didn't set it up to be adequate to do so. The NCAA is run by its member institutions, who all benefit from a bad system, so they didn't set up their own justice system to be able to break it down.

Then when something goes wrong the schools always point to the NCAA, which answers to the schools, as the problem.

And I agree the victims are the players, but that's not what the FBI is investigating or saying. That would be a court case probably.

Anyway, I guess the why doesn't really matter, I just think it's interesting.

Thank you, that's what I was trying to imply. The NCAA was complicit in this and I'm sure that's why the FBI didn't tell them anything about the investigation.

The NCAA knowing something is happening and being able to prove it without wiretapping and subpoena power are two different things

Pumpkinhead said:

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bobinator said:

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I guess it depends on how far it really goes on if it's worth all the money being spent on it.

Anyway, it's not a huge complaint because the system has been broken for years and we spend plenty of taxpayer money on dumb stuff anyway that we might as well spend it on something I care about.

I just think it'll be kind of odd if, of all the ways to do it, it's the FBI that takes down college basketball.

Bilas has been calling it a cartel for years, and there are a lot of structural similarities.

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One group of the victims are any companies, financial advisors, agents, coaches, schools who do actually mostly operate within the rules. If you are a cynic then you'll say none exist. But maybe there are a few generally honest folks out there.

Another group of victims in my opinion has been the college athletes themselves, some of whom do deserve the 100K (or more) based on what the schools make off of them. Which is kind of a different topic, yet one of the roots of what has happened here.

Also, ignoring corruption is never a good thing. Corruption in its many forms (bribery, embezzlement, fraud, etc.) almost always eventually has a significant negative impact on a market economy and society if left unchecked.

You are right that perhaps of all the corrupted systems out there, maybe NCAA college basketball athletics didn't deserve to get highest priority.

But let's face the facts. If college athletics is ever going to get cleaned up, it probably needed some agency like the FBI with real teeth to come in and act like a bull in the china shop and break a bunch of plates. Whether this does actually change anything long term, we'll see. But the NCAA itself was seemingly inadequate to do so.

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Bilas is full of **** here. the NCAA system is far too slow, but

(a) it does not have subpoena power

and

(b) depends on Universities to self report. When UNC, Louisville, Auburn, USCw/e do not, they have to dependent upon public reports, SACS, internal investigations. When big universities go Turtle and Lawyer up, the smaller schools who get caught are at a much higher risk of punishment.


IMO, if the NCAA doesn't come down hard on UNC for decades of fake classes, they will need to be Restructured. that may happen anyway.

However, the 800 lb gorilla is SEC football. The NCAA largely leaves them alone - particularly fiscally. Saban is OK with it. He would not be happy about restructuring as it would interfere with his "process."

I don't know that "complicit" is how I would describe the NCAA, more like irrelevant.

Again, if the member schools wanted to make the NCAA more powerful, they could. They chose not to.

Ultimately the schools don't answer to the NCAA, it answers to them.

Guitarsoup said:

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The NCAA knowing something is happening and being able to prove it without wiretapping and subpoena power are two different things

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Correct. No FISA or any other warrants for the NCAA.

Guitarsoup said:

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The NCAA knowing something is happening and being able to prove it without wiretapping and subpoena power are two different things

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Yep, the NCAA's primary investigative technique is to try to locate people with an ax to grind to roll over on the schools.

bobinator said:

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I don't know that "complicit" is how I would describe the NCAA, more like irrelevant.

Again, if the member schools wanted to make the NCAA more powerful, they could. They chose not to.

Ultimately the schools don't answer to the NCAA, it answers to them.

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That won't happen because...SEC Football.

And all of college basketball. The only people who weren't benefitting from the system was the athletes so there was no incentive to change it.

Shoe companies, coaches, the schools themselves were all benefitting from it.

That's why "blaming the NCAA" or saying "the NCAA is powerless" is the most effective move that college athletics ever pulled. It gave them something to deflect blame to, and people for the most part buy it.

bobinator said:

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And all of college basketball. The only people who weren't benefitting from the system was the athletes so there was no incentive to change it.

Shoe companies, coaches, the schools themselves were all benefitting from it.

That's why "blaming the NCAA" or saying "the NCAA is powerless" is the most effective move that college athletics ever pulled. It gave them something to deflect blame to, and people for the most part buy it.

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It does get to the questions - how does the NCAA enforce an "honor code." Students can be threatened with expulsion. The NCAA has only handed down one death penalty to a major program. Is that where we need to head?


Recall that Bilas argues that the NCAA has no jurisdiction over academics. That's an attorney trick. Each University sets its own honor code on academics and qualifying - the NCAA has a broad metric (APR)...but can use SACS and the university's definitions of fraud and academic malfeasance to as a rationale to lay down sanctions.

The student-athlete gets plenty of perks: free tuition, fees, facilities worth a LOT of $$ (college is incredibly expensive). They have an allowance set by conferences per semester - that could be increased a bit.


What the NCAA can do with the NBA is restructure the one and done rule to either entering the NBA draft or Euroball or 3 year commitment+ to a university.

DTP02 said:

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Bluecat_Aggie94 said:

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1) "The NCAA had no idea" is not true. They may not have been intimately involved with the investigations, but they knew one was going on. Good chance we will ultimately find out they are the ones that asked for it.

2) Nike and football will implicated soon.

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I think you're wrong on both counts.

The feds got involved tangentially thru an SEC (securities, not footbawl) investigation, not from an NCAA tip, and I've seen reports that the NCAA was unaware, may have even been from the FBI's news conference.

And football cheating is an entirely different scheme than basketball. I doubt this investigation becomes a significant issue for football.

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I'm not suggesting I am an insider or have any specific inside information. But I am more connected than the average person on this stuff.

I believe I will be proven correct on #1. The NCAA has known forever about the dark underbelly of this, and also knew it was stuck due to lack of subpoena power. Maybe this never comes out, but I think we will find out they had a hand in the tip that led to the investigation.

Another alternative would be that a coach or group of coaches the are tired of losing out on players but were unwilling to get involved tipped them off.

We'll see. Again, I'm using a combination of actual sources and my on intuition on this, not arguing or taking a "friends in low places" stance here.

On #2, this is a little more speculative, but the first think I thought of when I started wondering if this would hit football is the U of Oregon. No secrets how in bed they are with Nike. But I became suspect when Bralon Addison suddenly flipped his long time commitment from us to them years ago, after he had been THE vocal voice of that year's recruiting class. I had honestly never seen a recruit so open about his enthusiasm and involvement in recruiting for our team, and at the 11th hour, he jumped ship and went to Oregon. Very similar to the "Player 10" at "University 6" situation, in my opinion.

The same incentives are there for football players as they are for basketball. The only reason it is not as rampant is that the ROI is smaller in football due to the larger number of players. The payouts may be smaller, but it's a pretty small investment for Nike to make to hand a players family 10K on the hopes they turn into a future athlete i in their brand universe.

bobinator said:

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DTP02 said:

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And football cheating is an entirely different scheme than basketball. I doubt this investigation becomes a significant issue for football.

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Yeah, I'd agree here. There aren't as many middle men in football. A lot more booster-to-athlete direct transactions.

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Football is different because the retail market for football shoes is a drop in the bucket compared to basketball shoes. I'm sure there's some kid somewhere in America who wears a fresh new pair of JJ Watt signature series cleats to school everyday, but there surely aren't many like him.

Basketball on the other hand, means millions upon millions of shoes sold at full retail, to kids of all ages. I'm 47 now, and saw the Jordan craze go full-on insanity back in the mid 80's, and it was unbelievable the status a pair of Jordan's gave a kid, even in my middle class southern high school. Can't even imagine what it would have been like in inner city Chicago or New York, LA, etc. And it's only gotten worse.

I should have been more specific, because it does benefit the players some, obviously they're getting scholarships and rent and that sort of thing, but it hasn't helped the athletes proportionately to how it's helped everyone else.

Everyone else is making WAY more money than they were back in the day, while the players have only gotten marginally better benefits along the way.

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2. AT LEAST FOR THE 2018 CYCLE, THE FAUCET WILL GET TURNED OFF
After the way federal investigators threatened coaches during their press conference on Tuesday, I have to believe that 2018 will end up being one of the cleanest recruiting cycles we've ever seen.
Perhaps I'm being nave here, but given the number of phone calls I took from college coaches over the last 24 hours who are scrambling for information or just scared of what could happen, I can't believe anybody in their right mind is going to color outside of the lines of the recruiting rules.
People are losing jobs, people are going to jail and people are facing very real prison time right now. To still want to cheat with all that is going on, a coach would have to be beyond reckless.

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Pumpkinhead said:

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Quote:

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2. AT LEAST FOR THE 2018 CYCLE, THE FAUCET WILL GET TURNED OFF
After the way federal investigators threatened coaches during their press conference on Tuesday, I have to believe that 2018 will end up being one of the cleanest recruiting cycles we've ever seen.
Perhaps I'm being nave here, but given the number of phone calls I took from college coaches over the last 24 hours who are scrambling for information or just scared of what could happen, I can't believe anybody in their right mind is going to color outside of the lines of the recruiting rules.
People are losing jobs, people are going to jail and people are facing very real prison time right now. To still want to cheat with all that is going on, a coach would have to be beyond reckless.

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So is notable or cause for concern that we have next to nothing lined up for our 2018 class?

On one hand, good because hard to get caught doing wrong if you haven't done anything at all... but on the other hand is this an indicator of why we have nothing going for 2018?