FBI vs. NCAA Coaches

[Beau Vine 54435]

On 4/25/2019 at 10:13 AM, Jhawk said:

Lot going on here for Forde to pick at....

1. Forde is a MU grad who hates KU more than anything.  He's a piece of shit.

 

It's so beautiful and perfect that you led with this.  KU touts that they were victimized by Adidas.  Months pass and KU takes nearly $200M to continue to be associated with their victimizer.  You don't have to be a MU grad to see that that's the fucking height of hypocrisy.  

 

Quote

7. The "what about duke" comment is just asinine and showing Forde's bias once again.

If you read the comments below the article, they're heavily populated with KU fans complaining that Duke paid Zion, so it's apparently not so asinine.  

[Beau Vine 54435]

17 hours ago, Blotto said:

 

You suggest that the member schools should abolish the NCAA? What would they replace it with? How would it differ from the structure of today's NCAA? I can understand the argument that perhaps the major D1 universities should be governed by a different organisation than the G5, Div II/Div III schools due to the vastly different economic realities they face, but it's not clear to me that the P5 schools want that. The majority of criticism regarding the NCAA comes from fans and the media. I'm guessing you cant find many comments from Presidents of Texas, Bama, tOSU, etc.... criticizing the NCAA. They carry the weight, and they seem to be just find with the status quo.

I completely agree with 95% of your post, but I think we've already seen the model that will lead to the death of D1 NCAA -- and that's the football playoff system.  The conferences simply got together and said fuck the NCAA, we're not letting them in on this cash cow and run the playoffs themselves.  I think that will eventually happen in all of the revenue sports, and the conferences will write their own rulebooks and administer penalties for violations (the Pac-10 basically used to do this).

[Blotto 23579]

1 hour ago, Beau Vine said:

I completely agree with 95% of your post, but I think we've already seen the model that will lead to the death of D1 NCAA -- and that's the football playoff system.  The conferences simply got together and said fuck the NCAA, we're not letting them in on this cash cow and run the playoffs themselves.  I think that will eventually happen in all of the revenue sports, and the conferences will write their own rulebooks and administer penalties for violations (the Pac-10 basically used to do this).

Perhaps. But the NCAA never really shared in the bowl money either. It will be very interesting with basketball which is the second largest revenue producer. The NCAA's annual revenue recently crossed $1 Billion dollars, and almost the entirety of that amount  is solely derived from the NCAA Tournament TV contract. That $1 billion dollars than gets distributed among DIV1to DIVIII schools to fund a whole bunch of shit. Upsetting that apple cart will be a dicey situation and the NCAA is not going to turn lose of that easily.  After football and basketball, there really aren't any significant revenue generating sports. A few schools might make some money here or there, but its trivial for the most part. 

But the real reason behind my post, was Jhawks contention that once the NCAA determined that they would not allow the players to be paid, the member schools should break off and do their own things. I can guarantee you the member schools ( all of them) don't want to go down that rabbit hole. I think you can safely assume that the Emmert is essentially acting as a mouthpiece for all university presidents on that issue. 

 

[PittsburghTiger 6198]

https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/arizona-comes-under-intense-scrutiny-with-video-evidence-of-former-assistant-coach-accepting-20000-in-bribes/

 

NEW YORK -- Arizona's men's basketball program came under extreme scrutiny with potentially ruinous evidence and witness testimony in federal court on Monday. 

You can't help but wonder what the NCAA will think of, and do, with it whenever that organization gets to formally deciding on what can, should or will be done to Sean Miller's program.

The second week of college basketball's second trial on corruption and bribery kicked off with the continuation of direct testimony by cooperating witness Munish Sood, who bolstered video and audio evidence against defendants Christian Dawkins and Merl Code. The defense will eventually have its chance at fervent retaliation, but for now, the prosecution continues to build a big case with clear-cut evidence and accounts that college hoops coaches at major universities were obviously willing to take part in a pay-for-play scheme.

How this plays in the hands of the jury remains to be seen, but for college basketball and the NCAA, Monday was the latest flagrant reminder of how the machine has been grossly greased for so long.

[Jhawk 1075]

One of the best things about this trial is that it should make the NCAA take a stand.  No one ever has really seen their investigations unfold and we are getting to see a real investigation unfold in real time.  Last summer the ncaa basically punted on doing anything claiming that the problem is everyone else and not them.  This summer the NCAA is going to have a lot of hearsay, a lot of hard evidence, judgments against runners and coaches in some cases, and judgments that should show that schools were victims and not perps in other cases.

It is going to be real tough for the NCAA to pick and choose who to punish in this deal.  Take Zona for example, Miller doesn't really have any hard evidence against him that has been admitted to court.  It could be argued that the convo between dawkins and code about miller is just hearsay and never happened.  If you punish miller for that then you have to punish KU for De Sousa and Preston as well as Duke for Zion.  Though you don't have any names right now, you'd also have to punish UK and UNC since they "have their resources."

This whole thing is a shit show for the NCAA.  I have no clue what to expect so I'm just expecting the worst.

[Machinator 32099]

 

[dcar00 14374]

8 hours ago, Machinator said:

 

Northern Iowa better watch their 6.

[Goodman 3273]

2 hours ago, dcar00 said:

Northern Iowa better watch their 6.

zona is easy pickings right now as the P12 is a mess. Let's see what they do with Kansas, LSU, Auburn & Duke. 

[Viper 12112]

Hell yeah

[PittsburghTiger 6198]

On 5/4/2019 at 12:21 PM, Machinator said:

 

It's all so damned dirty. I look forward to the results from Duke "looking into" the $300,000 Zion Family payment as well.

[Jhawk 1075]

I don't know what to make of the Arizona investigation yet.  As far as I know KU hasn't been alerted to an investigation other than the one KU opened for De Sousa and the NCAA is currently reviewing his appeal on his suspension.  Are Auburn, USC, OSU, and other schools that have been named, and have coaches named, been formally alerted to an investigation?

If I'm putting on my crimson and blue glasses then I think this is a good sign that KU isn't being investigated.  If I'm being practical then I'm saying that it is only a matter of time but the NCAA wants Zona blood first because it seems to be very low hanging fruit at a school that is a top 15 program in the greater landscape of cbb.  A good scalp to take without disturbing the upper echelon of programs.

This summer is going to be interesting as the trials finish up and the NCAA gets to work.

[VolenteHawk 495]

On 4/26/2019 at 2:16 PM, Beau Vine said:

It's so beautiful and perfect that you led with this.  KU touts that they were victimized by Adidas.  Months pass and KU takes nearly $200M to continue to be associated with their victimizer.  You don't have to be a MU grad to see that that's the fucking height of hypocrisy.  

 

If you read the comments below the article, they're heavily populated with KU fans complaining that Duke paid Zion, so it's apparently not so asinine.  

They didn’t really tout victimhood. They sent out a press release acknowledging they were aware of their inclusion in an indictment and quoted the relevant language language from it. That doesn’t mean clean (I’m on record as nobody is clean), but Forde’s entire article is predicated on overstating KU’s actual response to the indictment.

 

[Bartles 769]

Dawkins and his lawyer preening afterward basically saying, yeah the coaches did it but it's the right thing to do so we're not dishing any more specifics than you already got.

Dawkins and Code guilty of bribery, NOT wire fraud

 

Dawkins said some college coaches are paying players, "as they should be."

"The guys who are are good people to me. I’m with them. I think they should be, that’s the right thing to do," he said. "If you’re making tens of millions of dollars … I (saw) Dabo Swinney got ($93 million over 10 years). There’s no way you should be able to go to sleep at night with (a nearly) $100 million-deal and your players make nothing. That’s b--llsh--.”

Edited May 8, 2019 by Bartles

[Jhawk 1075]

Game on for the ncaa. I’ve got a feeling that this summer will be anticlimactic all of the sudden. No reason. Just a gut feel.  

[Machinator 32099]

 

[PittsburghTiger 6198]

2 hours ago, Machinator said:

 

 

slime

/slīm/

noun

 

1.  A moist, soft, and slippery substance, typically regarded as repulsive.

"the cold stone was wet with slime"

synonyms:

ooze, sludge, muck, mud, mire; More

[Slacks 6862]

Game on for the ncaa. I’ve got a feeling that this summer will be anticlimactic all of the sudden. No reason. Just a gut feel.  

Not a damn thang...

[Victor Lazlo 1777]

7 hours ago, Machinator said:

 

Well, that certainly clears that up. 

Case closed.

[Beau Vine 54435]

Quote

Asked whether he ever said the words "strong-ass offer," Wade told reporters, "I've not heard the recording so I don't know."

This was my favorite part.

[pops 7007]

The NCAA can't do shit. They take a peek under that rock and all of the sudden their crown jewel, March madness... The event that generates like 98% of their revenue is gone.  And they know it. 

Idaho state or Campbell or someone will get hit with something. That's it. I mean geezus h Christ... Sean Miller still has a job. That's really all anyone needs to know. 

[housious 468]

Are people really going to prison over this nonsense? Bribery and wire fraud for paying some college basketball players?

The FBI needs something better to do. 

[Machinator 32099]

 

[Beau Vine 54435]

Quote

Just days ago, the University of Southern California cried “victim” and asked federal judge Edgardo Ramos to punish Tony Bland, a former assistant basketball coach. Bland pleaded guilty to accepting a $4,100 bribe to steer any NBA-bound Trojans to the business management company of Christian Dawkins as part of the college basketball fraud scandal.

“The actions of Mr. Bland and his co-conspirators have significantly damaged the reputation of USC as an institution, the USC athletic department, and its men’s basketball program,” wrote Michael Blanton, USC’s vice president for professionalism and ethics (seriously, that’s his title and, seriously, he actually wrote the above sentence).

On Wednesday, Judge Ramos appeared to have dismissed that line of thought, as well as the government’s request for Bland to spend up to a year in prison. Ramos instead sentenced him to two years probation and 1,000 hours of community service.

“Can the institution be victimized if people at the very highest levels of the institution are corrupt?” Ramos asked from the bench, according to CBSSports.com’s Matt Norlander.

The answer should be no (and the issue will be answered in federal appeals court), but don’t tell these whiny athletic departments that just love to play martyr.

It’s embarrassing, except, none of them appear capable of realizing how pathetic they sound.

USC, after all, has been involved in numerous wild NCAA infractions cases through the years and just had a coach and a senior administrator arrested for taking bribes from rich parents to admit their non-athlete students into the school via the water polo team.

Now, that actually was a scandal.

An anonymous assistant hoops coach taking a few grand on an ill-advised side hustle?

Shrug.

USC isn’t alone. Former Arizona assistant coach Emanuel “Book” Richardson will be sentenced by Ramos on Thursday in New York. Arizona couldn’t help but pout and pile on, of course, claiming in a letter to Ramos that Richardson’s “arrest was devastating news to every student, coach, administrator, staff, trustee, and alum.”

Really? Every single one of them? They were all devastated by this news?

Congratulations to the tens of thousands of students and hundreds of thousands of employees and alumni for soldiering on.

Bear down, Arizona, bear down.

Who the hell writes this stuff?

View photos

 

Sean Miller of the Arizona Wildcats reacts during the second half of a college basketball game during the 2018-19 season. (Getty)

More

Look, everyone knows competing at the highest levels of college basketball is an intrinsically risky proposition. It is also profitable, fun and can do wonders for alumni and prospective student engagement. But it has been corrupt for, oh, 60-70 years.

As such, having an assistant prone to some shenanigans (and let’s be honest, this isn’t that big of a deal) is just the cost of doing business. Eventually every program gets touched by scandal.

Arizona even tried to claim that due to Richardson’s arrest, “the recruitment effort for future players became substantially more challenging.” While “substantially more challenging” is a relevant term, the Wildcats managed to sign a consensus top-five recruiting class with all five players ranked in the top 100 this year.

So, no, he didn’t bring the place to its knees. Claiming otherwise was a substantial distortion.

Richardson, 46, is by almost all accounts a good guy, a family man and a hard worker. He recruited and coached scores of players in his career (which includes working under Sean Miller since 2007 at Xavier). Almost all of them continue to swear by him to this day.

Yes, he did wrong. He shouldn’t have taken the extra money. He admitted all of that when he pleaded guilty and accepted his punishment. Doing so immolated his career and his ability to support his family.

In court on Wednesday, it was revealed Richardson, a college graduate who worked for J.P. Morgan as a banker before getting into coaching, was recently turned down for a job in retail due to the scandal.

 

Yet he declined to point fingers at others. He never flipped on Arizona or Miller, both of whom have been enveloped in the smoke of allegations. Had he taken his case to trial, who knows what comes out, but it certainly would have been a nerve-racking period for Arizona and Sean Miller.

Richardson didn’t do that though. He stood tall for his former employer and boss.

Rather than return the favor by either writing the judge and asking for leniency, or at least just sitting it out, Arizona cried about being wronged. It couldn’t help itself.

“Mr. Richardson’s actions caused real harm …” the school wrote to Ramos.

Of course, just when you think USC and Arizona couldn’t take themselves any more seriously or behave in a more hypocritical manner, they still haven’t yet approached the chutzpah of Kansas.

The Jayhawks wailed so much about being victimized by Adidas and executive Jim Gatto that they wrote to his sentencing judge. Then they demanded about $1 million in restitution from Gatto, an act that is financially crushing to a former middle manager with a family.

Once that was done, Kansas promptly went out and signed a new $196 million endorsement deal with Adidas, the supposedly evil company with evil employees that caused them so much harm.

The Jayhawks know full well that they weren’t the victims of anything or anyone. They understand they need Adidas’ money and recruiting connections to continue to field nationally prominent teams.

Everyone in college basketball realizes that. It’s how the game works.

They just don’t tell that part to the judge.

Note for Jhawk -- Wetzel went to UMass, so he certainly doesn't have an agenda against Kansas.

[Don Johnson 4757]

https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/at-least-six-college-basketball-programs-will-be-notified-of-major-ncaa-violations-by-this-summer/

 

 

Quote

 

ORLANDO, Fla. -- At least six Division I men's basketball programs will receive Notices of Allegations for Level I violations from the NCAA by the summer, stemming from the federal government's recently completed investigation of the sport, a top NCAA official told CBS Sports.

Stan Wilcox, NCAA vice president for regulatory affairs, said two high-profile programs would receive notices of allegations by early July.

The remaining four would be rolled out later in the summer in what was described as a wave of NCAA investigations meant to clean up major-college basketball.

"There's even another group of cases that we're still working on," Wilcox said. "The main thing is that we're up and ready. We're moving forward and you'll see consequences."

Level I violations are considered the most serious by the NCAA. They carry the strongest punishments that can include scholarship reductions, postseason bans and show-cause orders against coaches. According to the NCAA, a Notice of Allegationsis sent after an investigation has closed. 

It has previously been reported that at least Kansas, Arizona and Louisville had been under NCAA investigation.

At least 20 schools were mentioned during the course of the FBI's investigation. Among others were Oklahoma State, Southern Cal and Auburn. Wilcox said only those schools involved in eligibility issues would be impacted.

He would not name any of the schools involved.

"I would just say that it's clear when you look at the number of cases that were listed by the Southern District of New York, those numbers are more than likely be reflected in the number of cases that are going to be moving forward," said Wilcox, a former Florida State athletic director and Notre Dame basketball player.

When the original FBI indictments were handed down in September 2017, there were reports that top head coaches would be implicated in wrongdoing.

NCAA rules now make head coaches responsible for wrongdoing within their program.

"Those top coaches that were mentioned in the trials where the information shows what was being said was a violation of NCAA rules, yes. They will be all part of these notices of allegations," Wilcox said.

The NCAA had held off on investigations, he said, at the request of the government until the trials were concluded.

"So now that's it over, we're going to be moving forward with a number of Level I cases that will help people realize that, 'Yeah, the enforcement staff was in a position to move forward,'" Wilcox said.  

 

 

[Jhawk 1075]

You have to think that USC, OSU, Auburn, Louisville, arizona, and LSU are low hanging fruit. Then you have to believe that Ku is not far behind.

if it’s six schools at level one i would say the 4 schools that actually had coaches charged are obvious. Then the school that started it all in Louisville is obvious. Wade at LSU basically admitted wrongdoing as did LSU when it suspended him. KU is in the vague spot because the fbi didn’t see enough to bust Ku however the NCAA made Ku classify the Adidas guy as a booster so by the strict letter of the law we broke rules. The NCAA’s standard for evidence is much lower than the us legal system though so we could have issues. Luckily bill self wasn’t the one on the call that was recorded so if that is used then it looks like kurtis Townsend is headed for early retirement. 

Im thinking the first schools mentioned get level 1 violations and KU gets off easy with vacated games (including the final four) and maybe a scholarship reduction.

I don’t think anyone is effected in 2020 because this is going to be a litigated and appealed shit show. This is when the fun starts. The article is vague enough that big time school could be USC or zona or UL or KU.  Depends on if they mean a blue blood basketball school or just a big ass, high profile, school. 

[Jhawk 1075]

Quote

 

 

 

 

Just saw this, which makes me feel better about KU’s position

 

 

Edited June 12, 2019 by Jhawk

[Dbeasy 15093]

You have to think that USC, OSU, Auburn, Louisville, arizona, and LSU are low hanging fruit. Then you have to believe that Ku is not far behind.
if it’s six schools at level one i would say the 4 schools that actually had coaches charged are obvious. Then the school that started it all in Louisville is obvious. Wade at LSU basically admitted wrongdoing as did LSU when it suspended him. KU is in the vague spot because the fbi didn’t see enough to bust Ku however the NCAA made Ku classify the Adidas guy as a booster so by the strict letter of the law we broke rules. The NCAA’s standard for evidence is much lower than the us legal system though so we could have issues. Luckily bill self wasn’t the one on the call that was recorded so if that is used then it looks like kurtis Townsend is headed for early retirement. 
Im thinking the first schools mentioned get level 1 violations and KU gets off easy with vacated games (including the final four) and maybe a scholarship reduction.
I don’t think anyone is effected in 2020 because this is going to be a litigated and appealed shit show. This is when the fun starts. The article is vague enough that big time school could be USC or zona or UL or KU.  Depends on if they mean a blue blood basketball school or just a big ass, high profile, school. 

I’m glad that you are almost giddy about the fact that your school apparently wasn’t caught with enough evidence of their obviously corrupt behavior that has stained the game of basketball. And oh by the way, the multiple conference championships mean nothing anymore because of your school’s rampant cheating. Your school’s historical accomplishments as part of the Big 12 are completely meaningless. Hang that from the rafters.

[Jhawk 1075]

Maybe you missed that UT was also named in the investigation. Are you happy they might not be pursued or do you want the stiffest penalties possible?

im of the mind that if you want to clean up the sport you can. The ncaa doesn’t want that so it’s going to pick off a few bad actors here or there and never fix the problem. I’m fine with KU getting punished if it means that everyone is getting their due. But that isn’t how the NCAA is going to do this. They are going to take the chicken shit way out. If KU does happen to have level 1 violations then I hope we unleash everything against the ncaa like UNC has at every turn until they go away. Now if you want to talk about schools like Maryland (who paid 60k to the same player adidas paid 2500 to) and you want to talk about duke who landed the guy with the 100k asking price and you want to talk about Texas A&M who had money in a shoe mailed to a kid and you want to talk about Wichita state who had their future nba point guard get $5k then let’s talk. But if the ncaa is just going to pick and choose who they punish and advertise the fuck out of it so they look proactive about the situation then I’m going to say fuck the ncaa, I hope everyone with allegations fights them to the bitter end and the ncaa goes down in flames because the member schools can’t agree on how to enforce on a level playing field. 

The FBI doesn’t even respect the ncaa enough to give them their evidence and investigative materials. We shouldn’t respect them or their rules or enforcement either. The sooner we all recognize the ncaa is a eunuch the faster we can solve the problems in college athletics. As it stands now though the ncaa is just a mechanism for fans to point at other programs and say “you are bad and we are good.”

[housious 468]

42 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

 

I’m glad that you are almost giddy about the fact that your school apparently wasn’t caught with enough evidence of their obviously corrupt behavior that has stained the game of basketball. And oh by the way, the multiple conference championships mean nothing anymore because of your school’s rampant cheating. Your school’s historical accomplishments as part of the Big 12 are completely meaningless. Hang that from the rafters.

 

You’re wrong. And you’re stupid.

['stache 21880]

15 hours ago, Jhawk said:

You have to think that USC, OSU, Auburn, Louisville, arizona, and LSU are low hanging fruit. Then you have to believe that Ku is not far behind.

if it’s six schools at level one i would say the 4 schools that actually had coaches charged are obvious. Then the school that started it all in Louisville is obvious. Wade at LSU basically admitted wrongdoing as did LSU when it suspended him. KU is in the vague spot because the fbi didn’t see enough to bust Ku however the NCAA made Ku classify the Adidas guy as a booster so by the strict letter of the law we broke rules. The NCAA’s standard for evidence is much lower than the us legal system though so we could have issues. Luckily bill self wasn’t the one on the call that was recorded so if that is used then it looks like kurtis Townsend is headed for early retirement. 

Im thinking the first schools mentioned get level 1 violations and KU gets off easy with vacated games (including the final four) and maybe a scholarship reduction.

I don’t think anyone is effected in 2020 because this is going to be a litigated and appealed shit show. This is when the fun starts. The article is vague enough that big time school could be USC or zona or UL or KU.  Depends on if they mean a blue blood basketball school or just a big ass, high profile, school. 

"Wilcox said only those schools involved in eligibility issues would be impacted.

I think OSU is okay. Lamont Evans was convicted of taking bribes to steer players to a certain agent, including his time at South Carolina. One of Mike Boynton's big selling points when he got the job was that he kept Evans on staff. When this came out, the AD did an investigation and kept Boynton. Jeffrey Carroll was withheld from playing due to eligibility concerns, but was quickly reinstated and deemed eligible. Thus, I don't think OSU had any "eligibility" issues related to Lamont Evans' shade.

https://sports.yahoo.com/oklahoma-state-holds-star-guard-jeffrey-carroll-amid-eligibility-concerns-224844409.html

https://sports.yahoo.com/oklahoma-state-guard-jeffrey-carroll-221352597.html

 

 

Edited June 13, 2019 by 'stache

[Jhawk 1075]

While that would seem to clear some schools I think Wilcox is too vague for anyone to read into his eligibility comment. Even KU. We have one that was glaring. No doubt. Technically Ayton wasn’t an issue, but he was the center of a lot of evidence and drama. Dennis Smith jr. wasn’t an eligibility issue but definitely is now. Bowen was never an issue because he never got on campus. But he did take the money and that is known and UL should probably be eligible for the death penalty because of him. It would seem they would be #1 on the list for level 1 violations but technically they never had an eligibility issue with a kid on campus. 

 So the question really is what constitutes an eligibility issue in the eyes of Wilcox? 

[conVINCEd 21469]

16 hours ago, Jhawk said:

Maybe you missed that UT was also named in the investigation. Are you happy they might not be pursued or do you want the stiffest penalties possible?

im of the mind that if you want to clean up the sport you can. The ncaa doesn’t want that so it’s going to pick off a few bad actors here or there and never fix the problem. I’m fine with KU getting punished if it means that everyone is getting their due. But that isn’t how the NCAA is going to do this. They are going to take the chicken shit way out. If KU does happen to have level 1 violations then I hope we unleash everything against the ncaa like UNC has at every turn until they go away. Now if you want to talk about schools like Maryland (who paid 60k to the same player adidas paid 2500 to) and you want to talk about duke who landed the guy with the 100k asking price and you want to talk about Texas A&M who had money in a shoe mailed to a kid and you want to talk about Wichita state who had their future nba point guard get $5k then let’s talk. But if the ncaa is just going to pick and choose who they punish and advertise the fuck out of it so they look proactive about the situation then I’m going to say fuck the ncaa, I hope everyone with allegations fights them to the bitter end and the ncaa goes down in flames because the member schools can’t agree on how to enforce on a level playing field. 

The FBI doesn’t even respect the ncaa enough to give them their evidence and investigative materials. We shouldn’t respect them or their rules or enforcement either. The sooner we all recognize the ncaa is a eunuch the faster we can solve the problems in college athletics. As it stands now though the ncaa is just a mechanism for fans to point at other programs and say “you are bad and we are good.”

I would gladly welcome an investigation that would allow us to fire Shaka with cause.

[Jhawk 1075]

I think something to remember is that I have always been in the camp that KU gets hit and possibly hard. We were too talked about during the trial even if we weren’t doing something illegal. Can’t have that much smoke and not get the NcAA in your shit and they have been. The question is how much does the ncaa want to posture up and go at it?

for instance, they can’t use the wiretap because the fbi didn’t give it to them. But if Townsend actually admits it was him and gets his penalty like a man then you automatically have to investigate Zion and duke. If Townsend gets hit hard then he has no motivation to keep quiet. He might say “yeah we lost him to bike and duke because he got $200k from them” you can’t punish him for hearsay and then say “but duke and Zion must not have done anything.”

the texts with self are so vague that they could mean anything. On top of that the testimony in court was that self never knew of payment so how do you link them if self stonewalls the ncaa? Our problem is hopefully limited to de Sousa and games with him being retroactively vacated based on new information. Preston never saw the court on top of payments to AAU owners (his mom) being legal by ncaa standard. Same happened with josh Jackson’s mom. 

Somehow we are going to get smoked but I believe we will fight like hell. I think that Self and the NCAA are tired of each other and either both are going to play nice from here on out or it’s going to be war and things are going to get really interesting. 

[Catdaddyhorn 3447]

 

 

[Machinator 32099]

 

[Machinator 32099]

 

[Jhawk 1075]

Here we go!!

[Beau Vine 54435]

No one cheats like Bruce Pearl:

While the Auburn men’s basketball program waits for a seemingly inevitable Notice of Allegations from the NCAA, it appears that the Tigers have created even more problems for themselves than they were already facing.

A report last week from AL.com said that the school “did not conduct recruiting of any kind from September 2017-April 2018.” The media outlet cited Auburn athletics as the source for that information, adding that there were “no official visits, no unofficial visits, and no contacts or phone calls made to any recruits during that time.” The school never publicized this self-imposed sanction, and it may have remained a secret had coach Bruce Pearl not alluded to “some real strong penalties that were never made public” on a July podcast with CBS’ Jon Rothstein.

Last Wednesday, AL.com published its story about the self-imposed recruiting ban. But there was just one problem: The ban that supposedly stretched from the Sept. 26, 2017, arrest of assistant coach Chuck Person as part of the nationwide federal corruption investigation until the end of that season, wasn’t exactly ironclad. And if Auburn implemented a compliance policy in direct response to a potentially major NCAA rules violation by a member of its staff, and then flouted its own policy, that could magnify the issues that lie ahead for the basketball program.

“What Auburn was hoping could be a mitigating factor in dealing with the NCAA could wind up being an aggravating factor,” said a source with extensive knowledge of the NCAA investigative process. In NCAA parlance, “mitigating factors” often are steps a university took to be in compliance with the rules; those are taken into account by the Committee on Infractions when it comes to levying sanctions. “Aggravating factors” are just the opposite: Rule-flouting actions by a school that can increase the severity of sanctions.

Only Pearl, with his florid history of failing to adhere to recruiting parameters, could end up involved in this one. He was fired at Tennessee in 2011 after lying about having two recruits at his house for a cookout when the recruiting calendar did not permit it. Fifteen years ago, when he was at Milwaukee, the school turned in a secondary violation for an impermissible contact with a recruit that was cut from the same cloth — attending a function at Pearl's house.

And only Auburn, with its long and storied tradition of athletic dysfunction, could turn a potentially positive compliance decision into a potentially massive negative. Here’s how it happened:

Within 90 minutes of AL.com reporter Sam Blum tweeting his story about the self-imposed recruiting ban on Aug. 7, evidence of Auburn recruiting activity during the no-recruiting window began surfacing.

There was a tweeted picture from Athletes of Tomorrow, an AAU program from the Atlanta suburb of Powder Springs, showing darn near the entire team being treated to apparent insider access at Auburn on Feb. 3, 2018 — the date the Tigers played a home game against Vanderbilt. Rivals.com writer Dan McDonald retweeted the picture and wrote, “Auburn had the whole AOT squad on campus tonight, including 4-star commit Babatunde Akingbola, 5-star 2019 wing Isaac Okoro, 5-star 2020 PG Sharife Cooper and 4-star 2019 wing Charles Smith.”

Akingbola committed to Auburn on Jan. 11, 2018, in the middle of the recruiting ban. While it’s possible that he did so completely within a vacuum, with no communication with the Auburn staff, it would be unusual. Pearl retweeted Akingbola’s commitment announcement.

Then someone found a tweet from AAU insider Julius Kim saying that prospects Josh Nickelberry and Jaylin Williams were going to visit Auburn on March 3, 2018, when the Tigers were playing South Carolina to close the regular season. There is no confirmation that Nickelberry — who wound up signing with Louisville — made the trip. However, 247 Sports’ timeline of Williams’ recruitment says that he did take an unofficial visit to Auburn on that date. Williams signed with Auburn.

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Auburn Tigers head coach Bruce Pearl reacts after a foul call during the Final Four. (Photo credit: USAT)

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Yahoo Sports also was made aware of an Oct. 28, 2017, Rivals.com story by McDonald updating the recruitment of Sharife Cooper. The story included this quote from the Athletes of Tomorrow player regarding Auburn: “I love it. I love the coaching staff and what they are doing. I love everything about Auburn. Coach Pearl was here last night [Tuesday].” The Tuesday closest to that story publication was Oct. 24, nearly a month after Person was arrested, and Cooper said Pearl was on the road evaluating him.

Recruiting ban?

Pearl did not respond to multiple attempts to reach him for comment Sunday. Prior to that, Yahoo Sports sought clarification from Auburn on Thursday morning. Friday afternoon, an athletic spokesman provided a statement: “Auburn took a proactive approach by self-imposing recruiting restrictions that limited unofficial visits, official visits, contacts, evaluations and phone calls.”

The key word there is “limited,” which is less absolute than “prohibited.” Spokesman Kirk Sampson explained to Yahoo Sports the same thing he told AL.com after the Athletes of Tomorrow team photo popped up: An exception was made to accommodate that visit because it had been scheduled before Person’s arrest.

Perhaps that’s the case, but it also would be highly unusual for an AAU team’s unofficial visit to be scheduled four-plus months ahead of time. Especially given the proximity of said AAU team to the school. Powder Springs, Georgia, where Athletes of Tomorrow is based, is located about two hours from the Auburn campus — an easy drive, not a flight that would have been booked months in advance.

Athletes of Tomorrow coach Omar Cooper, the father of Sharife Cooper, made no mention of the visit being planned months in advance when reached by Yahoo Sports. “Just because we were on their campus, that doesn’t mean they asked us to come. I can’t recall way back then. I don’t need permission to get in my car and go somewhere.”

Had Auburn taken its recruiting ban seriously, it had the option to cancel the team’s visit or — if the visit were solely an Athletes of Tomorrow initiative — to decline the overture. It chose not to, and in fact welcomed the team in behind the scenes. This is an AAU outfit that was clearly central to Pearl’s recruiting, and that appears to have taken precedence.

Remember, hiring Pearl was controversial enough in its own right. After the firing at Tennessee, he was hit with a three-year show cause penalty by the NCAA. That didn’t deter Auburn from bringing him onboard in 2015. The on-court result of that hire has been unprecedented success: The Tigers won the Southeastern Conference regular-season title in 2018, won the league tournament in 2019 and then advanced to the first Final Four in program history before falling in a controversial, last-second finish to eventual national champion Virginia.

But the Person bombshell brought the Tennessee skeletons back out of the closet. And then Pearl refused for months to sit down for a formal interview with Auburn investigators — an act that led many to question why the school didn’t fire him on the spot. Instead, the school wound up giving him a contract extension in June 2018, and a new five-year deal in April 2019.

While sparing (and ultimately rewarding) the head coach, the school took other punitive steps. In addition to firing Person, who accepted $91,000 in bribes in exchange for trying to steer players to an aspiring agent and financial adviser, Auburn suspended two players for the entire 2017-18 season, Austin Wiley and Danjel Purifoy. (Purifoy also was withheld for an additional nine games during the 2018-19 season.) Staffers Jordan VerHulst and Frankie Sullivan were suspended not long after Person’s arrest and never returned, for reasons that the school has never publicly explained.

But those proactive moves by the school may now be counterbalanced by another proactive move that does not appear to have been fully implemented. In fact, it might have been outright flouted on occasion, or at least maneuvered around at a time when compliance would seemingly be paramount.

This potential new grist for the NCAA investigative mill could take time to sift through, delaying and possibly strengthening the anticipated Notice of Allegations. All the Tigers can do is sit and wait. Situational ethics have long been an Auburn hallmark, and it might end up biting an oft-penalized school again.

[Jhawk 1075]

Pearl is a great coach and a horrible cheater. Did anyone not call this the second auburn hired him?  

[Machinator 32099]

 

[Jhawk 1075]

Interesting twist. If the schools were lobbying the FBI to not give up  the evidence and the schools are the NCAA then the ncaa basically just killed its own investigation. 

Edited September 4, 2019 by Jhawk

[Zavala 1384]

Lol the ESPN ticker just said NCAA investigated shit based on that Michael avinatti turd? Wtf

[Beau Vine 54435]

On 9/4/2019 at 11:57 AM, Jhawk said:

Interesting twist. If the schools were lobbying the FBI to not give up  the evidence and the schools are the NCAA then the ncaa basically just killed its own investigation. 

What did you expect to happen?  Gambling is way too profitable to close down Casablanca. 

[PittsburghTiger 6198]

On 9/6/2019 at 11:46 PM, Zavala said:

Lol the ESPN ticker just said NCAA investigated shit based on that Michael avinatti turd? Wtf

 

On 9/7/2019 at 1:50 PM, Beau Vine said:

What did you expect to happen?  Gambling is way too profitable to close down Casablanca. 

I thought I saw the same scroller but that it said Duke investigated the Avinatti claims and found that nobody paid Zion Williamson. I could be wrong, but I thought that's what it said.

[Zavala 1384]

3 minutes ago, PittsburghTiger said:

 

I thought I saw the same scroller but that it said Duke investigated the Avinatti claims and found that nobody paid Zion Williamson. I could be wrong, but I thought that's what it said.

Lol why would anyone investigate anything based on that nutjob?

[PittsburghTiger 6198]

8 minutes ago, Zavala said:

Lol why would anyone investigate anything based on that nutjob?

Beats me. But he made some crazy claims and with all the crap going on I guess Duke figured an investigation was needed.

[Beau Vine 54435]

16 minutes ago, PittsburghTiger said:

 

I thought I saw the same scroller but that it said Duke investigated the Avinatti claims and found that nobody paid Zion Williamson. I could be wrong, but I thought that's what it said.

That's what "happened."  Avenatti announced that he was never contacted by anyone running the "investigation."

[Beau Vine 54435]

13 minutes ago, Zavala said:

Lol why would anyone investigate anything based on that nutjob?

You mean like all of the text messages and pdfs he dropped are irrelevant?

[Zavala 1384]

10 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

You mean like all of the text messages and pdfs he dropped are irrelevant?

Lulz how could he have a bunch of people's texts and what PDFs? He's trying to extort money from Nike and caught a case.

On May 22, Avenatti was indicted in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan with charges of extortion, conspiracy to commit extortion, conspiracy to transmit interstate communications with intent to extort, and transmission of interstate communications with intent to extort.

The DOJ wrote that Avenatti was indicted on extortion charges, “relating to his alleged attempt to extract more than $20 million in payments from Nike, Inc., by threatening to use his ability to garner publicity to inflict substantial financial and reputational harm on the company if his demands were not met.”

[Laxtonto 12121]

KU basketball expected to face multiple major violation allegations from NCAA

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The NCAA is preparing to issue a notice of allegations that details multiple major violations in the Kansas men’s basketball program, The Star has learned.

The notice will come, sources told The Star, after a summer of speculation following a top NCAA official saying the organization would make findings against schools involved in a pay-for-play recruiting scheme investigated by the FBI.

When asked for comment, Dan Beckler, associate KU athletic director for public relations, told The Star that KU Athletics had not received any notification from the NCAA.

The Star also asked the NCAA for comment.

“Due to member-created rules, we cannot comment on current, pending or potential investigations,” Stacey Osburn, NCAA director of public and media relations, wrote in an email.

On June 12, Stan Wilcox, the NCAA’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said at least six schools would receive a notice of allegations for Level 1 violations this summer.

North Carolina State on July 10 received a notice of allegations that included two Level 1 violations.

Level 1 violations carry some of the most severe punishment, including postseason bans and loss of scholarships.

N.C. State and Kansas were among the schools associated with Adidas that were named during the federal investigation.

Former Adidas employee T.J. Gassnola testified in federal court last October that he made payments of $90,000 on behalf of Adidas to the mother of KU basketball player Billy Preston and $2,500 to the guardian of Silvio De Sousa. Gassnola also said he agreed to pay $20,000 to Fenny Falmagne, the guardian of De Sousa, to help Falmagne exit an agreement to send De Sousa to Maryland, an Under Armour school.

Gassnola testified that KU coach Bill Self was not aware of the payments.

As a result of that trial, De Sousa was given a two-year NCAA suspension. Kansas appealed the second year of the punishment and the NCAA reinstated De Sousa, who is allowed to play this upcoming season.

Gassnola avoided prison time and was sentenced to probation.

One of KU’s NCAA issues could be Gassnola’s relationship to Self and assistant Kurtis Townsend as revealed in court.

Text messages showed that during the time KU was recruiting De Sousa, KU coaches were aware that Gassnola was in contact with De Sousa’s guardian, Fenny Falmagne.

Gassnola testified that Townsend asked him to contact De Sousa’s guardian. Falmagne told The Star he wanted to see if Adidas would send gear it didn’t need to Angola’s national team.

Third parties and/or boosters are not allowed to provide anything with monetary value to a recruit or the recruit’s family or guardian. It is possible the NCAA deems it inappropriate for Townsend to ask Gassnola to send gear to Angola.

ESPN recently reported that NCAA investigators in addition to N.C. State were working on cases at KU, Arizona, Auburn, Creighton, Louisville, LSU and USC.

When a school such as KU receives a notice of allegations, the university has 90 days to respond. The NCAA has granted extensions to schools in the past.

The school response then is sent to an NCAA enforcement committee. That committee has 60 days to file a reply and a “statement of the case.”

Next, a hearing date is scheduled with the NCAA Committee on Infractions. At that hearing, the university is allowed to present its case with an NCAA ruling to follow. The ruling could take several months to reach.

If a school is assessed penalties, it has the opportunity to appeal.

https://www.kansascity.com/sports/college/big-12/university-of-kansas/article235306247.html

 

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