General20
Basketball Maven
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I've heard a lot of crazy ideas and read a lot of crazy posts about what is happening in college basketball right now so I thought it might be productive to explain the shady side of recruiting so that we can have an intellectual discussion about it and all be on the same page.
I am far from any kind of authority on this issue, but I've spoken with enough people and paid close enough attention to connect a few dots. So I'll give my understanding of what's going on and I encourage people to add to/correct what I've said in the hopes that we can all come to a working understanding of the ways things are in college basketball.
Here is how I understand things:
#1) Basically every college basketball player is getting paid, and it has been this way since long before any of us were born.
As an explanation, I'm sure there are some players who don't get paid anything, but its widespread enough so that we can say everybody gets paid as a generality and be correct. Its not just Duke and Kentucky players. Its not just five star recruits. Even the worst player off the bench on the worst team is getting something and it has pretty much always been this way.
How do I know? I know guys who were not great players and who played at non high major schools that got paid. I also know a guy who played for a non high major school in the 60's and got paid way back then. So this is happening everywhere, and has been happening for a LONG time . . . when I say long I mean a century or more - you don't remember a more innocent time when amateurs were really amateurs. It hasn't been that way in our lifetimes.
#2) Paying athletes does NOT mean a coach or booster giving a kid money to bribe him to choose their school. The reality is more complex than that.
As an explanation, I'm sure sometimes kids get money from a school as incentive to sign for them, but that is far from standard operating procedure. Its just not how the game is played.
How do I know? The boosters I know pay money to buy shiny new things to attract recruits. They don't buy the recruits themselves.
#3) Most of the time kids are getting money from agents and shoe companies who are going to profit from the kid's success later in life.
As an explanation, being an agent is a pretty sweet job if you can get it, but to be an agent you have to get players to sign with you, and the easiest way to do that is to give them money when they are young and need money. As for the shoe companies. They look at giving school kids money as a cheap investment. If you can get a high school kid in with your brand for 50K that's a lot better than waiting until he's a superstar and having to sign him for 50 Million.
How do I know? Read any article about the FBI investigation or talk to anybody affiliated with AAU.
#4) Not all schools cheat the same. Some are way worse than others.
There are schools like Louisville and Miami that give high schoolers drugs and prostitutes to entice them. Duke and other schools often help out the kids parents with jobs, houses, money etc. And there are plenty of smaller but still impermissible forms of cheating, I'm sure you can think of a bunch, and I won't get into them all here. Lets call these types of cheating the "obvious" types of cheating.
The important distinction for this discussion is a lot less obvious, and requires some explanation.
In short, some coaches let kids get paid by agents and shoe companies, and other coaches actively participate in the process.
When a coach actively participates in the process it looks like this: A shoe company or agent wants to sign a promising young player, they offer the player money but so does a competing agent or shoe company. How to get him on your side? Get the coach (who has a lot of influence over the player) to coerce him into choosing your company over your competitor. So the agent or shoe company pays some money to the coach who is essentially selling this kid to their business whether its good for the kid or not. In time, relationships form and agents/shoe companies suggest a kid choose a school with a coach who is already in their pocket to ensure the kid follows through with them once they give him money. It works both ways, both parties benefit, and the kid is happy making money.
This is the type of thing that four coaches have been arrested for so far.
I think that Syracuse is the kind of school that lets kids get paid by agents and NOT the kid of school that actively participates in the process. So those people saying "thank god Syracuse never pays its players" are missing the point. Syracuse players are still getting paid, its just that Syracuse coaches are not exploiting them or particularly benefiting from the fact that they get paid.
Right now it seems like the FBI is going after coaches who are taking money from shoe companies/agents to push the players in their direction, so I also think people worried that the FBI will come banging on Syracuse's door are probably worried for nothing.
The real worry, to me, is that lists of players who accepted money are going to come out, and some SU player will be on that list. The average non-die hard sports fan will not have a good enough understanding to differentiate between the teams who cheat in a way that gives them an unfair advantage like Duke and Kentucky, and the teams who just tassetly allow cheating to happen, like Syracuse.
Of course, if Syracuse goes down in this thing, so will most other schools.
How do I know that Syracuse is not actively working with agents/shoe companies?
First, Boeheim has talked publicly about not wanting certain kids to go pro when its bad for them, and spoken badly about "handlers" and "people giving his kids bad advice" a coach who was in on the action probably would not speak this way.
Second, I know for a fact that Boeheim was giving Hopkins endorsement money that most head coaches normally keep for themselves. I think he's doing the same for his other assistants. My guess is this is an incentive to compensate them for the lost revenue of not playing ball with any agents or shoe companies.
So what will the future hold? Well, I don't have an educated guess about that. Just a guess.
My guess is a few of the really bad violators (Pitino being the obvious example) lose their jobs before the dust settles. After the dust settles a lot of schools end up looking bad, and the NCAA ends up looking incompetent. Probably most schools escape individual punishment but different more stringent rules are adopted overall.
Perhaps schools end up being allowed to pay players? I would like that, especially if it means the high major schools split from the rest and finally play by their own rules and only play against each other.
I am far from any kind of authority on this issue, but I've spoken with enough people and paid close enough attention to connect a few dots. So I'll give my understanding of what's going on and I encourage people to add to/correct what I've said in the hopes that we can all come to a working understanding of the ways things are in college basketball.
Here is how I understand things:
#1) Basically every college basketball player is getting paid, and it has been this way since long before any of us were born.
As an explanation, I'm sure there are some players who don't get paid anything, but its widespread enough so that we can say everybody gets paid as a generality and be correct. Its not just Duke and Kentucky players. Its not just five star recruits. Even the worst player off the bench on the worst team is getting something and it has pretty much always been this way.
How do I know? I know guys who were not great players and who played at non high major schools that got paid. I also know a guy who played for a non high major school in the 60's and got paid way back then. So this is happening everywhere, and has been happening for a LONG time . . . when I say long I mean a century or more - you don't remember a more innocent time when amateurs were really amateurs. It hasn't been that way in our lifetimes.
#2) Paying athletes does NOT mean a coach or booster giving a kid money to bribe him to choose their school. The reality is more complex than that.
As an explanation, I'm sure sometimes kids get money from a school as incentive to sign for them, but that is far from standard operating procedure. Its just not how the game is played.
How do I know? The boosters I know pay money to buy shiny new things to attract recruits. They don't buy the recruits themselves.
#3) Most of the time kids are getting money from agents and shoe companies who are going to profit from the kid's success later in life.
As an explanation, being an agent is a pretty sweet job if you can get it, but to be an agent you have to get players to sign with you, and the easiest way to do that is to give them money when they are young and need money. As for the shoe companies. They look at giving school kids money as a cheap investment. If you can get a high school kid in with your brand for 50K that's a lot better than waiting until he's a superstar and having to sign him for 50 Million.
How do I know? Read any article about the FBI investigation or talk to anybody affiliated with AAU.
#4) Not all schools cheat the same. Some are way worse than others.
There are schools like Louisville and Miami that give high schoolers drugs and prostitutes to entice them. Duke and other schools often help out the kids parents with jobs, houses, money etc. And there are plenty of smaller but still impermissible forms of cheating, I'm sure you can think of a bunch, and I won't get into them all here. Lets call these types of cheating the "obvious" types of cheating.
The important distinction for this discussion is a lot less obvious, and requires some explanation.
In short, some coaches let kids get paid by agents and shoe companies, and other coaches actively participate in the process.
When a coach actively participates in the process it looks like this: A shoe company or agent wants to sign a promising young player, they offer the player money but so does a competing agent or shoe company. How to get him on your side? Get the coach (who has a lot of influence over the player) to coerce him into choosing your company over your competitor. So the agent or shoe company pays some money to the coach who is essentially selling this kid to their business whether its good for the kid or not. In time, relationships form and agents/shoe companies suggest a kid choose a school with a coach who is already in their pocket to ensure the kid follows through with them once they give him money. It works both ways, both parties benefit, and the kid is happy making money.
This is the type of thing that four coaches have been arrested for so far.
I think that Syracuse is the kind of school that lets kids get paid by agents and NOT the kid of school that actively participates in the process. So those people saying "thank god Syracuse never pays its players" are missing the point. Syracuse players are still getting paid, its just that Syracuse coaches are not exploiting them or particularly benefiting from the fact that they get paid.
Right now it seems like the FBI is going after coaches who are taking money from shoe companies/agents to push the players in their direction, so I also think people worried that the FBI will come banging on Syracuse's door are probably worried for nothing.
The real worry, to me, is that lists of players who accepted money are going to come out, and some SU player will be on that list. The average non-die hard sports fan will not have a good enough understanding to differentiate between the teams who cheat in a way that gives them an unfair advantage like Duke and Kentucky, and the teams who just tassetly allow cheating to happen, like Syracuse.
Of course, if Syracuse goes down in this thing, so will most other schools.
How do I know that Syracuse is not actively working with agents/shoe companies?
First, Boeheim has talked publicly about not wanting certain kids to go pro when its bad for them, and spoken badly about "handlers" and "people giving his kids bad advice" a coach who was in on the action probably would not speak this way.
Second, I know for a fact that Boeheim was giving Hopkins endorsement money that most head coaches normally keep for themselves. I think he's doing the same for his other assistants. My guess is this is an incentive to compensate them for the lost revenue of not playing ball with any agents or shoe companies.
So what will the future hold? Well, I don't have an educated guess about that. Just a guess.
My guess is a few of the really bad violators (Pitino being the obvious example) lose their jobs before the dust settles. After the dust settles a lot of schools end up looking bad, and the NCAA ends up looking incompetent. Probably most schools escape individual punishment but different more stringent rules are adopted overall.
Perhaps schools end up being allowed to pay players? I would like that, especially if it means the high major schools split from the rest and finally play by their own rules and only play against each other.
