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Today's Wall Street Journal has an article on page 14, The End of the NCAA Illusion. Court cases and athlete empowerment challenge old beliefs about amateurism. And the public is getting wise.
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Here's a fact that I just read....
with all the cheating going on -- here is the list of NCAA Division I Men's Basketball programs
who are CURRENTLY ON NCAA PROBATION for violations....(not academics)
The thing that stands out to me is that with all the big schools cheating the way they do-
yet only TWO of the schools currently on probation are power-conference schools -
Hopefully a few more of the big cheaters get added...
Louisville
Syracuse
Hawaii
Southern Miss
Louisiana Monroe
SEMO
Samford
Prairie View A&M
Northern Colorado
Southern
Morgan State
Alabama A&M
Pacific
Cal State Northridge
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While waiting for the jury to make a decision in the FBI fraud trial involving cash payments to recruits....
Here is another shoe company getting into the big-money endorsement contracts to high school players-
New Balance, who has always made good quality shoes but has never gotten into the basketball shoe market or played the big money endorsement game that Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, Converse (owned by Nike), Reebok (owned by Adidas) and others have, has signed highly rated 2018 high school player Darius Bazley to a $14 million contract. Bazley has opted not to attend college this year, and train privately to prepare for the 2019 NBA Draft. Perhaps coincidentally, he was named in the FBI trial as one of the high school players who were paid cash by middleman Christian Dawkins in the Adidas pay-for-play scandal.
Another long-time athletic shoe company Puma, also recently decided to get back into the basketball shoe/endorsement game this year-
There are now more than a dozen basketball shoe companies that have signed multi-million dollar deals with NBA and NBA-bound players. There are several Chinese brands (Li-Ning, Peak, Anta) that have exclusive deals with NBA players. They do moderate sales in the US, but since NBA basketball is big in China and elsewhere, and there are over a billion Chinese with more money than ever to spend, they make millions in sales overseas. Plus other newer brands like Big Baller Brand (LaVar Ball's brand) and others are trying to break into the basketball shoe market by signing high profile players to contracts.
But, despite all the escalating amounts of money paid by the shoe companies to the top stars, who remains the highest paid person by any shoe company?
It is Michael Jordan, who retired from playing for good over 15 years ago. He still makes well over $100 million yearly from his deals with Nike and their subsidiary Jordan Brand-
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there are Twitter reports that the jury has found all the agents who are on trial
GUILTY on all counts....
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Adidas executives Jim Gatto & Merl Code and player-school-agent matchmaker Christian Dawkins found guilty on all counts in college corruption case. Will guilty verdict change the seedy world of high school & college basketball? Definitively no.
Adidas issued this response-
We cooperated fully with the authorities during the course of the investigation and respect the jury's verdict. We look forward to continuing to work with the NCAA and other stakeholders in a collaborative and constructive manner to improve the environment around college basketball. We have strengthened our internal processes and controls and remain committed to ethical and fair business practices.
Interesting that in the Adidas public response, they do not deny that they were complicit and guilty in this fraud and massive cheating scandal. There is simply no way the Adidas executives who were convicted of fraud, and were clearly guilty of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to direct talented high schoolers to certain colleges (Jim Gatto & Merl Code) were spending their own money. These kinds of enormous cash expenditures could only have been authorized at the highest corporate level.
So I wouldn't be surprised if the NCAA will point the finger at Adidas, and try to make them the only bad guy in this scandal. I expect to see the NCAA act all righteous and indignant and ban Adidas from sponsoring schools' apparel and events to try to divert the attention away from the fact that they were complicit and negligent in policing the cheaters, and away from the obvious cheating by the NCAA's own favored schools.Comment
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Audio recordings from wiretaps have been released involving the people who were just convicted in the FBI trial. This ESPN article has links to the audio files with some interesting discussions involving specific colleges and coaches-
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Former #1 recruit (from 2009) Renardo Sydney - finally confirms what everyone has known for 9-10 years...
that he was being paid to go to Mississippi State
But NCAA had every reason to know that back in 2009 - in fact every fan and every media outlet was TELLING THE NCAA that the kid was being paid...
His poor family suddenly started driving luxury cars and were living in a $1,000,000 mansion!!
How can NCAA be this stupid (or this inclined to allow obvious cheating and corruption to go unchecked)
Thus...it has led to the current FBI cases...
How could NCAA look at such obvious corruption and deem it OK & clear the kid?
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Corruption in the NCAA is rampant. The other schools need to start standing up to the NCAA and demand they do something. The public needs to start standing up to the NCAA. All the media outlets need to start standing up to the NCAA. They need to say " enough is enough"Comment
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The noose is tightening around Bill Self, Sean Miller, and Greg McDermott as calls and texts prove they dealt directly with the Adidas dealmaker--
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so I expect these guys still expect us all to believe them...
the sheer number of those phone call is astounding....60 calls a day to the top coaches in college basketball
and interestingly - many of the coaches & assistants apparently have other secret phones that nobody knows about ("bat phones")
so that makes it nearly impossible for the FBI or anyone to eavesdrop or subpoena phone records when they don't even know about those phones.Comment
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I think this shows the true colors of the NCAA. It shows how much they have not been doing all these yearsOriginally posted by tornado View PostComment
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Here is a thought. As much as I criticize the NCAA I am wondering about something. They say they are hampered from gathering evidence by their lack of subpoena powers so they have to rely on information dug up by Local news media. So maybe just maybe someone inside the NCAA got fed up with the rampant corruption and talked to a friend in the FBI and gave them some tips. Now they are just waiting for the courts to run their course before the NCAA can run with the information. I guess time will tellComment
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That explanation might make sense and I'd like to believe it. But if it was true, wouldn't there be at least some evidence from the past that the NCAA was serious about cleaning up the cheating at the major schools? And wouldn't there be at least some sign that they were willing to enforce punishment fairly and evenly to the BCS schools when they are caught cheating?Originally posted by bradleyfan124 View Post
Yet when they had clear proof of schools like North Carolina, USC, Kentucky, and others cheating, they did essentially nothing.Comment
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plus- if someone in NCAA handed over damning info to FBI, then NCAA would risk being exposed as knowing about serious, even illegal violations and choosing NOT to pursue them - thus effectively being an accomplice to criminal actions.
NCCA's best move is to sit tight, pretend they know nothing about any of this and let the feds finish up - then NCAA will be able to claim the sleaze is all cleaned up and we can move forward.Comment
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