CBS Reports Crazy Story of Former Friend of Josh Pastner Provided Extra Benefits to Georgia Tech Basketball

[CBS] - Ron Bell, an Arizona resident and longtime friend of Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner, has told CBS Sports he’s the person who provided benefits in violation of NCAA rules to Georgia Tech basketball players Josh Okogie and Tadric Jackson.

According to the school, Jackson accepted benefits totaling less than $525 while Okogie accepted benefits totaling less than $750. Bell turned over documents to CBS Sports that show he spent $233.40 on a plane ticket for Okogie, sent him three pairs of shoes totaling around $444 and ordered him two shirts totaling $56. Bell also provided CBS Sports with documents that show he spent $233.40 on a plane ticket for Jackson, sent him two pairs of shoes totaling around $271 and ordered him Knicks apparel worth $80. Those documents add up to around the estimates Georgia Tech self-reported, and any incongruities could be chalked up to estimation differences, which are allowable by NCAA rules.

Georgia Tech officials said last week that Pastner, the reigning ACC Coach of the Year, had no knowledge of the violations until Oct. 2, and that he immediately self-reported them to Georgia Tech’s compliance office. Asked if that’s true, Bell answered “absolutely not.” He said Pastner “100 percent” knew Okogie and Jackson were staying four nights at his home while it was happening. 

“And basically what [Pastner] told me is, ‘Nobody is going to believe you because you were in prison, and I’ve never been to prison, and I have a great reputation, and I don’t cheat,'” Bell said. “And I said, ‘You don’t cheat?’ Yes, you do. Yes, you do.'”

So, this story just broke this morning in an awesome job of reporting by Gary Parish over at CBS. I have to admit this is one of the crazier stories I’ve heard recently simply due to who is involved and how it’s breaking. Essentially Ron Bell is upset at Josh Pastner and now considers him a ‘bad friend’ so he’s outing him and every bit of cheating that was done. It starts with Pastner not calling Bell on his birthday, which is a normal guy thing to do, but also something Bell considered a show of disrespect.

Based on that he decided to start threatening Pastner about everything – including back to his Memphis days. Bell told CBS that money was exchanged, including Pastner giving Bell money to give to the players. He even goes on to say there’s no incriminating texts or anything like that because Pastner ‘is too smart to do anything that dumb.’ What that means is we’re now in a spot of words vs words and someone is either going to have to do digging to find out this happened or a former player or someone else will have to talk.

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But, how much of a piece of shit does Ron Bell have to be to self-report what’s essentially small violations in terms of value over a non-birthday call? Or the fact Pastner took Georgia Tech’s program and operations manger’s side in an argument vs Bell. Or that he didn’t ‘properly compensate’ Bell for the work he did? Mind you Pastner essentially saved Bell’s life – Bell’s own words – during his battle with a prescription drug addiction. The one thing Bell doesn’t realize here is he’s not hurting Pastner, he’s going to end hurting the kids and ruining their college careers depending on how far this goes.

Not to mention $80 of Knicks gear? What the hell is up with that? The only Knicks gear you should be getting is this shirt and it’s not $80.

Either way this is just another dumbass story that we’re going to have to follow leading into the season. Instead of talking about Miles Bridges and Jalen Brunson we’re talking about FBI and Ron Bell. Instead of talking about how open the race for the best team country is, we’re talking about who is cleared by the NCAA and who isn’t. It absolutely sucks but if this leads to some sort of change in the longterm to the NCAA, I can get behind it. My fear is nothing is done and it just results in same old same old as we go forward.