The Dark Days of College Basketball
Several big name college basketball programs were recently named in an FBI probe and it confirms what many of us have thought for years, college basketball is no longer amateur, it’s a full fledged business.
On Friday morning, Yahoo! writers Pat Forde and Pete Thamel released an article detailing many documents from the FBI’s investigation regarding NCAA men’s basketball. Seemingly dozens of players received plenty of money from an agency called ASM Sports, and when you go to their website, it’s conveniently “under construction.” There are a plethora of documents that the FBI uncovered from ASM Sports detailing the money that they paid to college basketball players, some even got upwards of $73,000! It’s been documented that NC State’s Dennis Smith got a whopping grand total of just over $73,000 from ASM Sports. Isaiah Whitehead, at the time a freshman at Seton Hall, received $37,657 according to the documents. While Markelle Fultz, yeah remember him!? He would go on to play at Washington and become the No. 1 pick in the 2017 draft, received $10,000 according to the documents.
The list goes on and on and mentions other schools like Duke, UNC, Maryland, Texas, USC, Arizona, and many more. The FBI event wiretapped Arizona Head Coach Sean Miller and they caught him discussing payments with a recruit. Have you ever wondered why the same schools always repeat and always have success? Well now we have concrete evidence to our suspicions. These kids get paid, and paid a lot. And don’t you think for a second I know that the coaches are involved. You think Coach K is innocent in this? Roy Williams? John Calipari? Rick Pitino? Thank god Pitino is gone all he did was pay his players with prostitution. They’re all involved in this, and the A.D.’s are too. We’ve seen too much in recent years that many administrators, coaches, and players turn a blind eye to things they knew were going on, things they knew were illegal but they did it anyways.
NCAA president Mark Emmert said “The allegations, if true, outlined in the report are evidence of ‘systematic failure’ that must be fixed immediately.” I can’t take this guy seriously because he knows what’s going on too. He also knows how to squeeze every cent out of these players while not letting them get anything in return. But…does he not allow them to get paid for playing because he knows they already got paid to go to their school? He’s OK with agencies giving the players $73,000 to go to school but he’ll be damned if you sell an autograph for five bucks. The topic of whether or not college athletes should “officially” get paid is another story for another day but I’m thinking that he doesn’t allow it because he knows they already get paid anyways.
Basketball isn’t the only culprit here, you betcha that football is most likely in on this too. Although there hasn’t been an FBI probe into this, I’m willing to bet my bank account that college football operates like this too.
This black eye dealt to college basketball must be addressed immediately. One of the biggest events is only 2 weeks away. March Madness. They certainly don’t want this cloud hanging over them during that. This story is so bad that even big name recruits are decommitting from schools because of the bad names schools are getting. If you’re a school that isn’t involved in this, how can you compete? How are you not filing for punishments? This sort of stuff calls for the “death penalty.” Ban the sport at the school for two years. The NCAA will never do it because they make too much money off of it but boy would I love to see it.
Also, my BC Eagles weren’t involved in this so there’s that…
–Brian Berard (@RockyBerard)