I appreciate the UK dude posting. He didn't come out guns blazing and he has a point. I have no proof that UK is doing any cheating, but there was the newspaper article about Anthony Davis getting a couple hundred G's, there were the stories from DC2 about UK offering him no academics required and a house for his girlfriend, etc. There is also the statistically unlikely fact that half of the Top 10 recruits seem to go there every year, which really shouldn't be possible in a fair system. However: I have no proof of any of wrongdoing.
The more important point right now is that at this stage of the game, I don't really think UK needs to pay players. Coach Cal has done an amazing job of building UK into a destination for these top players. What he is doing is fairly obvious stuff, but somehow nobody else had previously hit upon the full combination of things he has. He has top facilities, he has top fan support, he has a showman's personality, he is aggressively marketing UK as a trade school for the NBA, not a college, he surrounds the program with rappers, sports agents, sports company CEOs and the like, he outwardly revels in his guys leaving early. All of that is really appealing.
Look at Syracuse as a comparison: elite program, yes. Two final fours in the last 4 years. BUT, you have Boeheim out there publicly trashing players on the team, trashing players who want to leave early, giving the perception that he's submarining the draft stock of players who declare early (Ennis in particular). Frankly, Cal has shown this thing is not about coaching anymore, it is about salesmanship. And on that front, we couldn't have a worse guy than JB. I'm sure many reading this hate what I just said, but it is the way to go. Duke has come back strong because K became a combo of both. Other factors: Yes we have great facilities, but the living conditions are better at the palace UK has for players. At the Final Four, we have Joe Biden in the locker room. They have Jay Z. You tell me which is more appealing to a 19 year old. When a Top Recruit joins the DNC, maybe Joe Biden has an impact, ya know?
How UK gets away with the players having direct access to agents and business CEOs, I have absolutely no clue, but apparently the NCAA is totally fine with it, so what are we doing to adjust? Remember when UK won the championship and Anthony Davis bolted into the crowd to hug his mom - no sorry, my mistake, that was Phil Knight. A normal person says whaaaattt? But so be it, that is the competition, we have to adjust, not just be indignant.