Re: NBC News: Several NCAA Assistant Coaches Arrested by FBI
There's some distance between each school's respective situation.
Louisville is in some real trouble. The only thing that might save them is if this thing gets so big and involved so much that the NCAA can't afford to hand out appropriate punishments. But right now we're talking about Pitino being directly involved in paying players. Let's not forget they were already in NCAA trouble and he probably already should have been fired. The death penalty has to be on the table.
Then there's Auburn. To me they are kind of in the middle. Active coach, active players. The NCAA of old and we'd already have a tombstone made for their program. The saving grace? The FBI's viewpoint on the matter is that the school and players were victims. Along with that, so far they haven't connected the dots to Pearl. So the party line would be rogue coach caught up in FBI sting. Hard to figure out how the NCAA would handle this. Seems like if they wanted, they'd look at all the other things swirling around at Auburn, take into consideration Pearl was already on their naughty list and hammer Auburn. We have to see if more comes out or if the NCAA has the manpower (a lot going on) to dig deeper. This could go anywhere from slap on the wrist to program crippling sanctions.
Then there's Alabama. Ironically, it's one of the NCAA's guy that ended up being involved. You bring in the NCAA guy to help play by their rules and he ends up being the one breaking them. Nice. Unless more comes out though, no ineligible player was played, no active coach was involved. But! It is still very dangerous, we don't know what all the FBI knows, what was said, what they heard. It would be very dangerous to assume there's not more to this. In the case of Sexton himself, as important as he is, I'm not sure you can play him unless you get some kind of ironclad guarantee from the FBI/NCAA that no wrong doing occurred on the part of his parents.
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So, Michel’s financial services company paid Baker $5000 to arrange an August meeting with Sexton’s dad to sell the family on Michel’s services at the time Sexton becomes pro-eligible. After the meeting, Michel gave Baker another $10,000 to give to the family to steer Collin to Michel at a future date when Sexton announced he was going pro."
The article is correct in saying this might not be illegal and isn't a violation if this is exactly what happened. The thing is, at this point what proof do we have outside of Baker's word and the families word? You need to get someone you can trust who isn't acting in their own self interest to tell you that's how things went down, otherwise it is very, very risky.