FBI Probe of College Basketball

Displaced Bama Fan said:

I could take this to the NS with one pic.

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KrAzY3 said:

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.


"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.

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AUDub said:

Pitino confirmed as coach 2 in the DOJ's release. Louisville is so screwed.

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AUDub said:

For the uninitiated, this means he has a direct role in the money and schemed with Adidas personally.

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CB4 said:

Wow...just wow. Pitino just gave college basketball the "hold my beer and watch this" moment of a lifetime.

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Pilot172000 said:

Over/Under he gets a lifetime ban or at least lifetime show cause from college basketball. Secondly how much longer before we hear Calipari's name??

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Pilot172000 said:

Over/Under he gets a lifetime ban or at least lifetime show cause from college basketball. Secondly how much longer before we hear Calipari's name??

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CB4 said:

And Louisville has just been insured the death penalty in basketball.

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NationalTitles16 said:

This whole thing is an unholy mess.

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NationalTitles16 said:

Raise your hand though if you didn't know AAU and college basketball were filthy dirty. No one? That's right. Worst kept secret for years. This will force change in the NCAA, but in what direction?

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KrAzY3 said:

Ordinarily I'd say yes, but we really have no idea where this all leads to. I mean yesterday I made my wildfire analogy, shortly after that turns out an Alabama guy was involved. Who knows how far this goes and how deep. If this hits enough programs hard enough, there might not be any death penalties at all. Instead we might just see a major shift in rules and how they go about things and so on. The NCAA won't kill their cash cow, which is NCAA basketball tournament. So in isolation yeah Louisville probably gets the death penalty. Now? Who knows. You might even see a lot of these players end up getting their eligibility back, is the NCAA going to want the mess of having like 100 ineligible elite players? Probably not...

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CB4 said:

Only thinking in terms of using the past as context. Certainly something as broad sweeping as this is a game changer. The context being SMU in football where you had a school under the NCAA gun and, similar to Louisville, deeper allegations come to the surface. Especially when your head coach looks to be up to his eyeballs in it. And your AD has his daughter go to work in communications for the shoe company that is funneling money to your basketball program with which to steer players. In my mind, you can't get any more LOIC than that.

Then again when all is said and done "LOIC" may have to be completely redefined by the NCAA.

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Pilot172000 said:

How Louisville and UNC didn't get slammed the last go round is beyond me, but now that the feds are involved you can book it that somebody is going to get the axe. SMU wasn't the only SWC team doling out the cash to players they just happened to be the most expendable. Who is more expendable Kentucky or Auburn in Basketball or UNC or Louisville??

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