Arrests in Major NCAA College Basketball Probe

canderson

Mr. Brightside
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Jul 16, 2005
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Absolutely.

Edit - the top tier is Carolina, Duke, Kentucky, Kansas and Michigan State. All are Nike schools with the exception of Kansas (Adidas and recently I believe).

This does not mean that Louisville and Arizona are not good programs or "major," they are just not top tier.
Louisville has more wins since Pitino took over than any other program. Had a national title. I guess they suck though.
 
Aug 24, 2017
397
Louisville has more wins since Pitino took over than any other program. Had a national title. I guess they suck though.
They do not suck but they are not top tier. You've picked an oddly arbitrary cut off (Pitino took over) and ignored the wins already vacated.

The real test of a program, and Duke will actually go through this soon, is if they are a program (such as Carolina with three iconic coaches bringing Championships home) or the random luck of a generational coach landing there.
 

canderson

Mr. Brightside
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Jul 16, 2005
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They do not suck but they are not top tier. You've picked an oddly arbitrary cut off (Pitino took over) and ignored the wins already vacated.

The real test of a program, and Duke will actually go through this soon, is if they are a program (such as Carolina with three iconic coaches bringing Championships home) or the random luck of a generational coach landing there.
Vacating wins is stupid.

The winnngst program for the past 17 years makes not a second tier program.
 

Marciano490

Urological Expert
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Nov 4, 2007
62,312
It's great how every college head basketball or football coach claims his team is the only clean program, and 90% of his fan base believes him, despite all evidence to the contrary. It's like Santa Claus, except Santa Coach K.
Or Red Sox fans with their power hitters.
 

Jeff Van GULLY

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Jul 13, 2005
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Anytime you see a program go from non-contender to pulling 5 stars you know something is up. I expect LSU is going down as part of this.
 

BigMike

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Sep 26, 2000
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That’s a ridiculously small tier.
It is, but at the same time Michigan St is on it. Either there is a very small top tier or there is a larger top tier with Michigan St on it. I don't see how Mich St is in a 5 team top tier when the other 4 dwarf their accomplishments
 
Aug 24, 2017
397
It is, but at the same time Michigan St is on it. Either there is a very small top tier or there is a larger top tier with Michigan St on it. I don't see how Mich St is in a 5 team top tier when the other 4 dwarf their accomplishments
You know, this is a fair point and kind of blows up my whole little tier. I admit I'm a sucker for Izzo and am overrating him (and them) and underrating Louisville & Arizona.
 

Greg29fan

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Jul 14, 2005
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I'm sure these five star kids are turning down $100k to go play for free at North Carolina or Duke because they respect Roy Williams and Coach K so much. Or whatever Duke and UNC (and Syracuse and UCLA and...) fans have to tell themselves right now.
Carolina's highest rated recruit since McAdoo (#1) and Hairston (#4) in 2011 has been Justin Jackson at 11 in 2014. I realize our reputation is in the mud right now, but recruiting-wise, we don't even come close to places like Duke, Kentucky etc.
 

Luis Taint

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Apr 7, 2012
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I knew a kid growing up, who was a standout wide receiver. His family was lower middle class. Well, he decided to go to a certain local college, and magically got a brand new Eagle Talon(I'm that old).
 

SumnerH

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Jul 18, 2005
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That’s a ridiculously small tier.
No, it's a non stupidly-large tier. Otherwise you get into the situation where 10-15th ranked schools in a discipline are claiming to be first tier.

Though Louisville has an argument for at least borderline first tier.
 

CarolinaBeerGuy

Don't know him from Adam
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Mar 14, 2006
9,539
Kernersville, NC
No, it's a non stupidly-large tier. Otherwise you get into the situation where 10-15th ranked schools in a discipline are claiming to be first tier.

Though Louisville has an argument for at least borderline first tier.
Top 5 out of 351 teams seems too small to me. In reality tiers aren’t a thing in college basketball and it’s an arbitrary figure.
 

shaggydog2000

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Apr 5, 2007
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Or Red Sox fans with their power hitters.
Can't we just assume every professional athlete who played from the 50's up until today did some form of performance enhancing drug and not give a damn? Cause they probably did. And I don't.

But clearly top tier teams (whatever arbitrary definition you come up with to exclude the teams that just got caught) don't need to cheat and are top tier just by the nature of their moral superiority.
 

SumnerH

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Top 5 out of 351 teams seems too small to me. In reality tiers aren’t a thing in college basketball and it’s an arbitrary figure.
It's absolutely arbitrary, but tier one should be the no brainer that nobody objects to. Taking it out of basketball, nobody argues with MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon as top computer science schools, so those are the no brainer first tiers to me. When you get into Cornell or Princeton or Brown or Caltech, there's some question; that makes them in a separate grouping. Top of the next tier.

I think Louisville is probably up there with Duke, UNC, Kentucky, Kansas, etc in college basketball, but Arizona is getting to the level where you're arguing about who's in and out. And that makes them not tier 1. And I can see a case for Louisville/MSU being first out of the top tier, or in the first tier. They're the cutoff level schools.
 

riboflav

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Jan 20, 2006
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I'm probably naive but could someone explain to me why or how this is all illegal? I get that those arrested clearly violated NCAA rules but I fail to see how their actions rise to the level of fraud or bribery. I mean it's illegal to accept money from a financial advisor to gain him/her a new client? Or deliver a new client to an agent or school? In real estate, we call this brokering or wholesaling or bird dogging, etc. I get that the assistant coaches may have broken their university ethics rules in that they were accepting or brokering kickback deals outside their normal duties as university employees, but illegal? And who are the victims? I think the feds are saying its the universities, themselves... not the clean programs mind you but the ones with the assistant coaches who were arrested. Really? How were they victims? It seems if anything they profited.

Anyway, I'm not trying to be a contrarian. I genuinely don't get it.
 

riboflav

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Just found this article (WSJ so behind a paywall). It seems the bribery case will hinge on the feds being able to convince a judge/jury that the coaches are federal employees. I mean good luck with that, right? After reading the article, I'm wondering if this is the DOJ's attempt to expand the definition of wire fraud after the courts have been narrowing its scope for several years.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/probe-into-ncaa-basketball-relies-on-unusual-legal-theories-1506553296

EDIT: Again, I'm out of my depth here so I'd love for SoSH lawyers to fill me in.
 

uncannymanny

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Jan 12, 2007
9,081
Just from a cursory glance at the charges linked in the first post, the victims would be the schools that did not break those university ethics rules and were denied a fair chance, under those rules, at signing that top player (aka “profit”). This is millions and millions of dollars, not the small potatoes examples you have above.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honest_services_fraud

I would say “IANAL” but I think linking Wikipedia covers that.
 

Freddy Linn

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Jul 14, 2005
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Where it rains. No, seriously.
Not a lawyer, but interstate generally equals federal, plus you have federally funded institutions, and by extension employees paid in part with federal funds, engaging in some level of conspiracy and bribery.

Also, wait until the IRS steps in.

Holiday Inn Express, etc.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Mar 26, 2005
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I'm probably naive but could someone explain to me why or how this is all illegal? I get that those arrested clearly violated NCAA rules but I fail to see how their actions rise to the level of fraud or bribery. I mean it's illegal to accept money from a financial advisor to gain him/her a new client? Or deliver a new client to an agent or school? In real estate, we call this brokering or wholesaling or bird dogging, etc. I get that the assistant coaches may have broken their university ethics rules in that they were accepting or brokering kickback deals outside their normal duties as university employees, but illegal? And who are the victims? I think the feds are saying its the universities, themselves... not the clean programs mind you but the ones with the assistant coaches who were arrested. Really? How were they victims? It seems if anything they profited.

Anyway, I'm not trying to be a contrarian. I genuinely don't get it.
Can't read the WSJ piece but one of the bases for the arrests is something called "honest services fraud". That's a statute that has wide range of applicability when bribes are part of the conduct. See Wikipedia article for background and past cases here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honest_services_fraud

I'm surprised that there aren't tax charges filed as most people don't report bribes as income I would imagine.

SI article on the criminal charges here: https://www.si.com/college-basketball/2017/09/26/fbi-corruption-college-basketball-fraud-louisville-bribe
 

Captaincoop

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Jul 16, 2005
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Santa Monica, CA
Adidas is a publicly traded company and has been employing this guy (and others) to take cash off its books and use it to bribe coaches and athletes. There has to be some fraud in there somewhere.
 

riboflav

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Jan 20, 2006
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So are coaches at private institutions, immune? Will the DOJ make the argument that if say, Duke, receives any federal monies, then its coaches are susceptible to charges like these as well?


EDIT: I ask because it cannot be a coincidence that all coaches charged thus far have been public employees, state employees of course, but public employees, nonetheless.
 

riboflav

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I mean if so, then it seems inherent that programs like Duke or Stanford or Butler or so on would gain a competitive advantage in recruiting over the UNCs and Michigan States of the NCAA world.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Mar 26, 2005
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So are coaches at private institutions, immune? Will the DOJ make the argument that if say, Duke, receives any federal monies, then its coaches are susceptible to charges like these as well?


EDIT: I ask because it cannot be a coincidence that all coaches charged thus far have been public employees, state employees of course, but public employees, nonetheless.
I don't believe coaches at private institutions are immune - as the honest services law has been applied to private individuals plus there is still tons of federal $ going to these universities - but we'll have to wait and see.

This is the low-hanging fruit.
 

soxfan121

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Dec 22, 2002
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School like Duke and Carolina do not need to have players funneled to them. Granted, Carolina's recruiting has been down since one rogue administrator and one rogue professor tried to bring the Women's Basketball Team and Football team down and several men's basketball players were accidentally enrolled in those courses but even during that time they've recruited well enough to go to back to back National Championships and win the last one.

A guy like the one Louisville just payed $100,000 to get? Maybe he gets 10-15 minutes at Carolina by his Junior year, if his defense develops.
Shut the fuck up. Oh lord, this is always my least favorite part of any NCAA scandal - the tribal "my school is clean" reaction from fans who create all sorts of provisos about why their team is clean, while everyone else - especially their rivals - are dirty, dirty cheaters. If there was any wrongdoing at ______ it was some rogue ____ who did bad things without the knowledge or approval of the minor deity who leads the best program in the country, by god!

Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

I want to be clear, this isn't just aimed at you. Despite having him on ignore, I KNOW that Duke Sox has already been here, doing his "poor oppressed Dookies" routine and lamenting that they'd have more national championships if everyone else couldn't cheat and Coach K could compete on a level playing field. (How'd I do? Hit all the talking points, or did I miss one?)

EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE PROGRAMS/COACHES IS "CHEATING". Not one of them is above it. They are ALL taking money from the shoe companies and participating in this scheme. Louisville and Ricky P were particularly blatant and obvious about it? What a surprise.

These "college" programs are all dirty as PigPen in a barnyard. Not one of them is "clean". They are all exploiting "student-athletes" and they all do shady shit - pay recruits, no-work academics, etc. "Your" program is cheating, is run by cheaters, and has to cheat in order to compete with the other cheaters.

I'm in Kentucky on business right now and oh boy the UK fans are loving this.*

*Until they get nailed too.
Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup.

You should tell them to enjoy it, as the FBI will be accessing the FedEx records soon and we all know how UK likes to conduct its shady business by package delivery.
 

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
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Oct 1, 2015
24,393
The NCAA is a total cesspool. And no, paying players doesn't make it any less of a cesspool (just to head off that discussion). This is corruption from top to bottom and all the way around and there's huge money involved. How Carolina hasn't received the death penalty for their near 20 years of abject academic fraud that included hundreds of student-athletes (including almost their entire 2005 men's basketball championship team) - fraud so bad that it threatened the university's accreditation - is just beyond my ability to comprehend.

I don't have any idea what the solution should be. I just know that the NCAA is totally corrupt.
 

singaporesoxfan

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The NCAA is a total cesspool. And no, paying players doesn't make it any less of a cesspool (just to head off that discussion). This is corruption from top to bottom and all the way around and there's huge money involved. How Carolina hasn't received the death penalty for their near 20 years of abject academic fraud that included hundreds of student-athletes (including almost their entire 2005 men's basketball championship team) - fraud so bad that it threatened the university's accreditation - is just beyond my ability to comprehend.

I don't have any idea what the solution should be. I just know that the NCAA is totally corrupt.
Carolina was too big to fail.
 
Aug 24, 2017
397
Just from a cursory glance at the charges linked in the first post, the victims would be the schools that did not break those university ethics rules and were denied a fair chance, under those rules, at signing that top player (aka “profit”). This is millions and millions of dollars, not the small potatoes examples you have above.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honest_services_fraud

I would say “IANAL” but I think linking Wikipedia covers that.
That's an interesting angle because by going that route you are admitting that schools "profit" from unpaid (or under compensated if you want to get all technical w/the scholarships) labor.
 
Aug 24, 2017
397
The NCAA is a total cesspool. And no, paying players doesn't make it any less of a cesspool (just to head off that discussion). This is corruption from top to bottom and all the way around and there's huge money involved. How Carolina hasn't received the death penalty for their near 20 years of abject academic fraud that included hundreds of student-athletes (including almost their entire 2005 men's basketball championship team) - fraud so bad that it threatened the university's accreditation - is just beyond my ability to comprehend.

I don't have any idea what the solution should be. I just know that the NCAA is totally corrupt.
Carolina has not received the death penalty (or any sanctions yet, though they are coming) because of a bullshit kind of jurisdictional issue. The NCAA does not oversee Academics. So as long as Carolina argues that this was an academic scandal at the university and that non-athletes were also benefitting, they can most likely avoid the death penalty. They will be punished for providing impermissible benefits.

In order for Carolina to receive the death penalty the NCAA would have to find that this was orchestrated by the Athletic Department. Thus far, Carolina has been able to avoid that by having an administrator, a tutor and a professor take the fall.

Bigger picture though; the reason Carolina will not get the death penalty, whereas a school like Holy Cross might in this instance, is because of $$$. Carolina is pretty close to "untouchable" due to the money they bring in, their nationwide fanbase, et al. This is why I brought up the issue of "tiers" yesterday because I argue that those teams in the top tier, that cheat just as much or more than any other school despite my funny comments otherwise, are protected by the NCAA. Yes, it is bullshit. But I think that's the reality.

And, in fact, one way this whole investigation sort of confirms that is the NCAA did not bring down these schools. It took the FBI.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Mar 26, 2005
30,506
Just from a cursory glance at the charges linked in the first post, the victims would be the schools that did not break those university ethics rules and were denied a fair chance, under those rules, at signing that top player (aka “profit”). This is millions and millions of dollars, not the small potatoes examples you have above.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honest_services_fraud

I would say “IANAL” but I think linking Wikipedia covers that.
That's an interesting angle because by going that route you are admitting that schools "profit" from unpaid (or under compensated if you want to get all technical w/the scholarships) labor.
The victim is the "public" - i.e., you and me and not the universities - because the acts allegedly violate "the intangible right to honest services" by the people being accused of the crime in question.

Basically the statute is a really really expansive bribery statute that doesn't rely on a person being given money or (in certain circumstances and in certain courts) the explicit proof of quid pro quo.

Scalia argued vociferously that this statute was unconstitutionally vague.
 
Aug 24, 2017
397
The victim is the "public" - i.e., you and me and not the universities - because the acts allegedly violate "the intangible right to honest services" by the people being accused of the crime in question.

Basically the statute is a really really expansive bribery statute that doesn't rely on a person being given money or (in certain circumstances and in certain courts) the explicit proof of quid pro quo.

Scalia argued vociferously that this statute was unconstitutionally vague.
I need some more explanation because I've read the links and I still don't understand it. How is the public the victim? I get the notion of "right to honest services" but the pool of young men with the requisite "resume" to get offered a scholarship to play basketball is tiny --- that's not the public. Is the argument that the kids not getting paid are the victims?
 

Jim Ed Rice in HOF

Red-headed Skrub child
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Jul 21, 2005
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Do they have to return the money now?
The collegiate equivalent of a crack dealer calling the cops to say someone stole his drugs.

As a kid growing up in bumblefuck NH in the mid 80's I attended an up and coming basketball factory prep school. I was amazed at the amount of Nike swag that Leo Papile, then the main guy at BABC, would bring up to the kids that were part of his program. New Nikes every trip, clothes, whatever. Watching his top player sign with Cleveland State (where Boston guy Kevin Mackey was the HC) and then seeing the kid with a new top of the line boom box (google it kids) as well as rumors of car keys, etc. was surprising but I learned it was just a normal occurrence. Leo also parlayed that year's funneling of players to Cleveland State into a gig as an assistant coach in charge of recruiting.

Given the ease of communication options, the proliferation of AAU/travel teams and the increased money being generated today it's crazy to think this doesn't happen everywhere.
 

TheRooster

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Aug 3, 2001
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And Leo is still in the thick of things - his AAU program gets many/most of the top MA HS players. His tenure with the C's was one of the oddest situations I've seen.