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[QUOTE="bevosu, post: 2161406, member: 46"]
It goes back a ways in college basketball...

UCLA Wooden, Sam Gilbert.

LA Times...

A 1981 Times investigative series, which interviewed 45 people connected with the basketball program, established Gilbert as "a one-man clearing house who has enabled players and their families to receive goods and services usually at big discounts and sometimes at no cost."

[B]The paper quoted Brent Clark, an NCAA field investigator who said that, in 1977, he was told to drop his case in Westwood. "If I had spent a month in Los Angeles, I could have put them on indefinite suspension," he said of UCLA. An NCAA spokesman disputed this claim, saying that Clark was living a "fantasy world."[/B]

The Times established that Gilbert, during Wooden's heyday, helped players get cars, clothes, airline tickets and scalpers' prices for UCLA season tickets. Gilbert allegedly even arranged abortions for players' girlfriends.

Times reporters Mike Littwin and Alan Greenberg opined:

" . . . Wooden knew about Gilbert. He knew the players were close to Gilbert. He knew they looked to Gilbert for advice. Maybe he knew more. He should have known much more. If he didn't, it was only because he apparently chose not to look."

Gilbert died, at age 74, in 1987, four days before federal prosecutors, unaware of his passing, indicted him for racketeering and money laundering.

"I tried my best," Wooden told the Basketball Times in 2005, ". . . My conscience is clear."

[URL='http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/08/sports/la-sp-0609-wooden-gilbert-20100609']The dark side of the UCLA basketball dynasty[/URL]

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