College Basketball is (still) shady as hell: Federal probe results in corruption charges for NCAA assistants

Per ESPN, SBNation, and probably a raft of other news sources, a federal probe into corruption and fraud in the NCAA has netted assistants from various national basketball programs.

You can read the complaint here, which alleges hefty wire payments implicating college basketball players, assistant coaches, and representatives of at least one shoe company (Adidas). In addition, University-6 and University-7 in the complaint are Louisville and Miami (FL), respectively, while Player-11 is believed to be Brian Bowen.

Speculation among OTE writers is that these payments led Michigan State recruit Brian Bowen to sign with Louisville, along with other schools like Minnesota (per WhiteSpeedReceiver’s correction) potentially losing recruits to national names as well. These payments are thought to reach into six digits, with Bowen allegedly receiving $100K to go to Louisville, noted reputable program with no character issues.

Names listed, per ESPN:

The coaches named in court documents are Auburn's Chuck Person, Oklahoma State's Lamont Evans, Arizona's Emanuel "Book" Richardson and USC's Tony Bland.

Other people named in the documents include James Gatto, director of global sports marketing at Adidas; Merl Code, who recently left Nike for Adidas; Christian Dawkins, an NBA agent who was fired in May from ASM Sports for charging approximately $42,000 in Uber charges on a player's credit card; Jonathan Brad Augustine, president of The League Initiative and program director of the Adidas-sponsored 1 Family AAU program; Munish Sood, a financial adviser; and Rashan Michel, a former NBA official who founded Thompson Bespoke Clothing, a custom clothier for athletes.

Some notes from the OTE basketball staff:

DJ Carver, with an example of the texts we’re talking about:

http://maryland.247sports.com/board/67/contents/this-seems-big-FBI-arrests-several-basketball-coaches-108000869?page=2

Andrew Not-Krzyzewski: You may convey the following missive to Louisville and Pitino Sr: get fucked you greasy scuzzball, now there is no longer any doubt your program is as dirty as your personal life, congrats on wasting Tugs Bowen's eligibility on a season that will be erased from the histories.

Thumpasaurus: I can totally believe [Illinois head coach Brad] Underwood was in no way culpable in this thing, given that [Oklahoma State assistant Lamont] Evans was doing the same shit at South Carolina, but the fact that some of this shit happened while Evans worked for Underwood leads me to believe that [the NCAA is] gonna go after him anyway.

Predictions:

louisville: double secret probation
miami: ncaa doesn't have the balls to try them again
zona: 1-year tourney ban?
okst: hammer down, loss in scholarships; won the title too long ago
south carolina: fuckin hammer time, kentucky's the sec team not south carolina
auburn: bruce pearl canned, hit with show cause (LOL)
illinois: death penalty, forced to get rid of everyone running the university

An important note: No Big Ten teams have been named (yet) in these investigations. It does, however, confirm or validate many suspicions up and down college basketball that recruits have been lured away through payments and shoe company representatives. As the Mothership has noted, the Justice Department has a press conference scheduled for 11am GTZ, meaning we’ll learn more soon.

Essentially, it boils down to, as DJ says, the transition from rumor to fact in the seedy world of college basketball recruiting: “what we all knew was going on is happening.”