Is the proverbial shoe about to drop on college basketball royalty?

[Ryand877]

You must be naive. Boeheim and SU would not become co-conspirators with the blue bloods and they would not accept him because of it. Like any criminal gang, you have to commit a crime with them to prove your one of them. The NCAA in this case are the cops on the take who go out and suppress rival gangs allowing your gang dominance. We are talking about billions of dollars here, pollyanna.

I’m gonna take the high road and not comment any further to your post.

 

[Orangezoo]

While there is certainly a likelihood the blue bloods have friends in the NCAA and access to lobby more than others, it is no crime ring. I will leave it at that but discussing this with a former blue blood hoops player from the 80s, it's more like having lobbyists than anything. I will trust his real life perspective far more.

Now, could the NCAA be negligent and playing favorites?? Absolutely but beyond that it's just incompetent leadership.

 

[MikeDamone]

Can the FBI ban a school from the tournament? Can the FBI take away scholarships? Maybe the FBI gets an agent arrested that worked with Duke or UNC. NCAA will find away to say it was a rogue agent and exonerate the schools.

I'd love to see Duke and UNC blasted to oblivion but it's not going to happen. If the UNC 20 year sham classes took place at Seton Hall instead of UNC, do you think SH would have skated?

 

[Hoo's That]

Sorry, Jay. No. I want all these people gone from college basketball (and football, for that matter) and in a professional league at some level. I want every school following the D-3/Ivy model of money for athletes.

 

[Sherman20]

I am getting a kick about some writers and media folks talking about how this known and widespread, but none have done anything to publicize it in the past. I get protecting sources and they don't want to be that guy, but they can't know about this stuff, not report on it, but then heap praise K and Calipari and Saban as some kind of wunderkind recruiters who just happen to scoop up the very best players every cycle.

The schools aren’t paying these high school players and recruits. The agents and shoe companies are the ones paying them! Because they want to foster inroads on representing these athletes after they leave school and become a professsional. Most fans assume this has been going on behind the scenes for years, because it makes all logical sense. But fans hope their favorite programs steer clear of becoming middle men. I know they’ve tied a few assistant coaches to getting payments for steering players to certain agents. But that is all we got right now in terms of college basketball programs’ involvement in this stuff. Unless they can prove that assistant and head coaches are working with agents to steer certain recruits towards signing with them, there’s nothing illegal here. They have to prove there was a quid pro quo and that the coaches are part of the conspiracy. I don’t think SU basketball operates that way, nor do a lot of the top schools. Why get your hands dirty when you don’t need to? The only thing the NCAA can do is claim that these players who got loans were breaking amateurism rules and getting “extra benefits.”

It’s time to do away with the NCAA or force it into serious reform, declare that these athletes aren’t amateurs, and pay them they value they deserve for their services. There’s too much money being made in P5 college basketball and football and these athletes deserve some kind of cut for what they do.

 

[CuseInNOLA]

But they likely didn’t know. Or steered way clear of it. Why get in the middle of this agent and shoe company mess when you don’t need to?

The problem is that many (not all) coaches know something is going on, just not exactly what it is. They turn a blind eye to have plausible deniability.

 

[justgold315]

What I find interesting is that Bilas hasn't tweeted any real opinions today. Mainly just retweets. Has he been on TV at all. Bilas must know what's going on.

He was on sportscenter at noon.

 

[Sherman20]

Sorry, Jay. No. I want all these people gone from college basketball (and football, for that matter) and in a professional league at some level. I want every school following the D-3/Ivy model of money for athletes.

It’s not going to happen. The $$ genie has long been out of the bottle. That wish for a pure form of amateur basketball is long long gone. We need to accept the reality and work to create a model for college sports where the athletes are paid for their services (considering all the TV money involved) or can profit from their likenesses and sign with agents.

 

[Deano]

What the latest report on the college basketball corruption case means for Kentucky

UK Coach John Calipari released the following statement Friday morning: “I have no relationship with Andy Miller or any of his associates. Neither my staff nor I utilized any agent, including Andy Miller or any of his associates, to provide any financial benefits to a current or former Kentucky student-athlete. We will cooperate fully with the appropriate authorities.”

Lying sack of you know what. Throw the book at him/UK and Dook the hardest please!

I enjoyed the Nerlens Noel info in that article too but more than likely Cal had no knowledge of that either.

 

[CousCuse]

The schools aren’t paying these high school players and recruits. The agents and shoe companies are the ones paying them! Because they want to foster inroads on representing these athletes after they leave school and become a professsional. Most fans assume this has been going on behind the scenes for years, because it makes all logical sense. But fans hope their favorite programs steer clear of becoming middle men. I know they’ve tied a few assistant coaches to getting payments for steering players to certain agents. But that is all we got right now in terms of college basketball programs’ involvement in this stuff. Unless they can prove that assistant and head coaches are working with agents to steer certain recruits towards signing with them, there’s nothing illegal here. They have to prove there was a quid pro quo and that the coaches are part of the conspiracy. I don’t think SU basketball operates that way, nor do a lot of the top schools. Why get your hands dirty when you don’t need to? The only thing the NCAA can do is claim that these players who got loans were breaking amateurism rules and getting “extra benefits.”

It’s time to do away with the NCAA or force it into serious reform, declare that these athletes aren’t amateurs, and pay them they value they deserve for their services. There’s too much money being made in P5 college basketball and football and these athletes deserve some kind of cut for what they do.

The schools and the coaches were aware that these players were paid professional athletes making them non-qualifiers and they still recruited and played them in games when they know that is patently against the rules. It does not matter if they paid them or not.

 

[orangefog]

I just want to see the FBI agents brackets after selection Sunday. That should tell us everything we need to know.

 

[Cheriehoop]

Think about the manpower and resources the FBI has spent on this in light of the FBI dropping the ball in Florida.

Aren’t they totally different offices, departments within the FBI? I mean I doubt expert agents in interstate fraud, white collar financial, cyber crimes would be the same unit with experts heading an investigation on individual gun threats, terroristic threats within a state.

In fact I thought that local police investigated local threats unless either asked by local authorities for help or the crimes were interstate.
What We Investigate — FBI

 

[Jake]

I thought that was Isaiah Briscoe who went to Kentucky? His sister Iasia Hemingway played here.

Ugh. You are right.

 

[Cusefan0307]

This reeks of racketeering.

 

[Sherman20]

Sorry, Jay. No. I want all these people gone from college basketball (and football, for that matter) and in a professional league at some level. I want every school following the D-3/Ivy model of money for athletes.

Do most people on here really disagree with what Jay Bilas says in this interview? I just cannot fathom the mental gymnastics you have to perform to buy into this amateurism purity myth that the NCAA and its member schools have been peddling for several decades now—in the face of the schools and conferences building a multi-billion dollar college sports industry. Simply read Taylor Branch’s book and extensive reporting on the subject. Do you not see how the system is corrupt and that the athletes are being used as cheap labor to benefit the schools, conferences and the NCAA itself?

 

[reedny]

Not to mention FBI illegally wiretapping with out sufficient evidence for a warrant. FBI needs a complete overhaul...

LOL

 

[orange44]

Not to mention FBI illegally wiretapping with out sufficient evidence for a warrant. FBI needs a complete overhaul...

Great point...totally agree!

 

[capeorange]

How Emmert is still the President of the NCAA in all this is beyond me. This is all occurring under him and his watchdogs.

Looks like 'lack of institutional control' on Emmert's part.

 

[Sherman20]

The schools and the coaches were aware that these players were paid professional athletes making them non-qualifiers and they still recruited and played them in games when they know that is patently against the rules. It does not matter if they paid them or not.

There is absolutely no proof whatsoever that these coaches knew anything at this point. But carry on with your baseless speculation because of your hatred for certain blue blood schools and coaches. Your anger is misplaced here. It should be directed at the corrupt system.

 

[Alsacs]

There is absolutely no proof whatsoever that these coaches knew anything at this point. But carry on with your baseless speculation because of your hatred for certain blue blood schools and coaches. Your anger is misplaced here. It should be directed at the corrupt system.

What happens when you feed Gizmo after midnight. That is what you are doing.

 

[cuse10]

There is absolutely no proof whatsoever that these coaches knew anything at this point. But carry on with your baseless speculation because of your hatred for certain blue blood schools and coaches. Your anger is misplaced here. It should be directed at the corrupt system.

Who says that they didn't know? You'd have to be naive to believe that their hands are clean in this. Blue Chips broke it down perfectly. That wasn't just a movie.

 

[raf4488]

Here we go. Let’s see if Duke does the same (I doubt it). Though accepting a meal isn’t nearly as bad as receiving a loan or cash payment worth thousands of dollars.

 

[Forloveoforange]

I'm confused. Nerlens Noel is paid to choose Kentucky, but Kentucky Wildcats is not the entity that paid him? By the way, a lot of us thought this is what happened all along. You can kind of tell a lot if you just watch. You don't have to know, to know.

 

[CousCuse]

There is absolutely no proof whatsoever that these coaches knew anything at this point. But carry on with your baseless speculation because of your hatred for certain blue blood schools and coaches. Your anger is misplaced here. It should be directed at the corrupt system.

My anger stems from the fact that Syracuse and Coach Boeheim were singled out and given extreme punitive sanctions for infractions so minor, they are comical, even though Fab was kept out of the tournament. And the coach and program have a black mark on them because of that. I wondered why this happened and now I can see the truth of the matter. Boeheim would not participate in this and that made him an outlier, maybe they thought he thinks he is better than us. They tried to force him out of coaching, you don't think that is nasty hard ball.

 

[kmart128]

I disagree with Jay Bilas so much on this... Paying college athletes would be terrible. If that were to happen then you could say goodbye to a lot of college teams... Wouldn't be able to compete with Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, and UNC. Recruits just gonna go to who gives most... And its not like they don't get anything... They get a free a FREE college education. Kids pay thousands and thousands of dollars for that.