Not 'One Shining Moment': After FBI sting, college basketball should be afraid

[TomM]

Not 'One Shining Moment': After FBI sting, college basketball should be very afraid

Dan Wolken, USA TODAY Sports Published 4:44 p.m. ET Sept. 26, 2017 | Updated 5:33 p.m. ET Sept. 26, 2017

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/columnist/dan-wolken/2017/09/26/fbi-investigation-college-basketball-should-be-afraid/705427001/

At the end of college basketball's Final Four in San Antonio next April, the winning players and coaches will cut down the nets and make snow angels in the confetti covering the floor, just as they always do. Then One Shining Moment will play, alumni will choke up with tears and NCAA officials will bask in the glory of their annual showcase event.

But this time will be different than all the others before it.

No matter who wins or loses, high-level college basketball was unmasked Tuesday as a magnet for corruption, bribery and kickbacks it always has been behind the scenes. It took an FBI sting operation, a financial adviser turned cooperating witness and a shoe company so eager to cut deals and pull strings with prospects that the dots weren't even very hard for prosecutors to connect.

Though four assistant coaches were arrested and charged with crimes, we're still a long way from figuring out all the implications here, from the number of coaches that eventually will be roped into the scandal to how much shrapnel will hit the schools that employed them. The tentacles already have reached some of biggest names in the sport including an assistant for the preseason No. 1 team in Arizona, a Louisville prospect's recruitment and an assistant who helped build the roster South Carolina took to the Final Four last season.


But the ultimate fallout will reveal a more fundamental, existential issue for college basketball and the NCAA to reckon with: What does it say about your sport that conduct long considered standard, and even necessary, to win the highest levels is considered illegal by the federal government of the United States?

FBI STING: FBI arrests four assistants on charges of fraud
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/2017/09/26/college-basketball-assistants-arrested-fbi-fraud-corruption-scheme/703295001/

MORE: Louisville confirms it's part of FBI investigation
http://www.courier-journal.com/story/sports/college/louisville/2017/09/26/university-louisville-fbi-fraud-investigation-ncaa/704668001/

SCANDAL: Here's how the FBI says it all happened
http://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/2017/09/26/heres-how-college-basketball-scandal-worked/704269001/

As the indictments came down Tuesday morning, athletics directors from the 10 conferences that make up the Football Bowl Subdivision were gathering at a $600 per night hotel in Washington, D.C., for their annual meetings under the umbrella of an organization (LEAD1) that shifted its primary focus this year to lobbying Congress in case the gravy train of college athletics somehow gets derailed by the courts.

Let's just say the timing couldn't have been more perfect.

Though only a handful of schools will show up on the ESPN ticker or be mentioned by the network news, including Auburn, Arizona, Southern California and Oklahoma State, there is no university president, athletic administrator or coaching staff in the country that should feel safe today.

At a news conference in New York, U.S. attorney Joon Kim referred to the "dark underbelly of college basketball" that was exposed in the indictments. And though it took the investigative tools of the FBI to bring it out of the shadows, what he outlined as a criminal scheme is what college basketball coaches have long referred to as, quite simply, how things get done.

No, it's not every program. It's not every head coach. It's not every prospect.

But when the NCAA and the NBA ceded the entire responsibility of grassroots basketball to the shoe companies, they could use it to cultivate relationships with top players and legally fund the teams that were shuttling prospects to tournaments where college coaches could watch them by day and representatives of agents and financial advisers could meet them at night. Those meetings could take place in hotel rooms, restaurants, casinos, even bathrooms, without the NCAA having a prayer of regulating how the money was rolling downhill. And if you didn't have a way to get into that game, whether it's an agent wanting a potential client under the protective eye of a friendly coach or a shoe company representative bridging the gap between the grassroots program they fund and a college program they sponsor, you likely had no shot landing the top players in the country.