The Real NCAA

If you know anything about college sports, you know that all sports come with scandals. From the dawning of college sports there has been major scandals to major programs in the country. The newest scandal involves apparently 6 programs in college basketball that involves those schools, Adidas, and incoming student athletes. As it was reported by the FBI Arizona, Auburn, Oklahoma State, South Carolina, USC, and allegedly Louisville. Every team but Auburn made the NCAA Tournament and played well in the tourney. I personally like Sean Miller the head man at Arizona, I thought last year he was a great head coach, but finding out that his program was sending money to recruits to come play just knocks him off the list. These coaches have to know, if they don’t, well that is an entirely different problem. Either way all coaches assistant or not should be fired for their involvement in this scandal.  

These six schools were all Adidas schools that would front student athlete’s money to grantee the student playing for one of the six schools. These schools had their assistant coaches throwing the money (from $13,000 to $100,00) at the recruits. Also arrested was the head of global marketing for Adidas James Gatto who was guiding recruits to two of the schools and giving money and apparel to the recruits.

How this happens, well the schools assistant coaches travel the country in search of recruits through AAU basketball tournaments. Times have changed in that way. Back in the ‘90’s and early 2000’s the assistant coaches would go to high schools, talked to the high school coaches, the recruits, consoler’s, maybe a teacher or two, and guaranteeing the parents that you would take good care of their son.

Now, you have college coaches going to AAU tournaments talking to AAU coaches and outside people to try to pry the kid away from a certain shoe company and school. High School basketball doesn’t mean anything anymore and it is such a detriment to college basketball. The reason being, I’ve been to a lot of AAU tournaments because of my younger brothers. I have seen kids play a game with what would seem to be the junior/senior level, dominate, then switch their jersey inside out and play against my brother who at the time was in 8^th grade. So, not only do you mess up the talent pool because AAU basketball is as corrupt as the NCAA itself, but you also seem to expect an 8^th grader to face a 17-year-old kid with a mustache and tattoos at some point in the tournament. In AAU ball you also bring up the option of re-classing a kid to play another year in high school, giving him another year to train with the guys in the AAU program, just to boost his chances of getting into a college program. So, instead of going the Junior college route, you bypass that and keep the kid in high school to lessen the chances of personal growth in terms of maturity level. Not to mention the majority of kids playing AAU basketball are playing to get seen so they can take their families out of the situation that they are in. Some are playing for free because either the coach is paying for the kid, or a guy like James Gatto is giving the kid money to play AAU ball, shoes to play, and is steering them to schools with the shoes they have been paid to wear. So, do you blame the kids for taking free stuff that they have never had the means to get themselves? Of course, you blame the people that are putting the kids in this situation.      

Now again, when we see scandals in the NCAA regardless of what the sport is, you don’t normally see multiple teams in a specific investigation, and you usually never see the FBI involved. These types investigations by the FBI will be absolutely earth shattering for programs. The NCAA as an institution is a harsh group that bring down the hammer on programs for the little things that don’t matter in the grand scheme of things like buying a hot dog for a kid who doesn’t have food money, or driving a kid home from practice when it’s raining or snowing, or even for allowing a student athlete to use the school’s hose to wash their car, but they always seem blindsided by these violations, and are never prepared for it. If that doesn’t tell you all you need to know about the NCAA, then well, I don’t know what will.  

With the FBI being involved here the NCAA are not the major judge in this case. Whatever the NCAA wants to do with be secondary to what the FBI does and the punishments that dish out to the people involved. For guys like Gatto and former Louisville head coach Rick Pitino they should get the book thrown at them. To take the position that these guys take and extort kid’s futures for a few extra zeros at the end of the year, is it really worth it?

With scandals like this one, the arguments of “well the players should get paid” and “just send the kids to the NBA straight of high school” start to brew up. The kids that are talented enough and that are being sought after by these schools should go to the NBA straight out of high school to prevent this. Because, you aren’t giving money to the kids going to division II and III schools that the Super Star recruits going to Arizona and Louisville. This would also lessen the blow that you get from the pay to play people. But then again, when stuff like this reveals its ugly head, it brings up the ridiculousness of why the students aren’t getting paid in the first place. The corruption of the NCAA is too blind to see that they are using the kids in the exact same way the coaches and boosters are—using and extorting kids talents to settle million-dollar sponsorship and television deals. Corruption and college sports is like the old chicken and egg dilemma; which came first?

The scariest thing however, is how many schools are actually doing this. This is just the first wave of schools that got caught. What if schools like Kentucky, Kansas, and Duke are involved with boosters from Nike? What does this mean for college basketball, who is looking over their shoulder, and how much time are these coaches and boosters actually going to serve? These are all the questions college basketball will try to answer throughout the season, instead of how are you going to beat Kentucky and Duke this year, it is how much time will an assistant coach face.