MASSIVE College Basketball Breaking News - Federal Charges Filed Against Four College Basketball Assistant Coaches for Corruption

So, uh, yeah. Waking up today, getting ready to do some season preview stuff and think about who may or may not be in a top-25 and all of a sudden some of the biggest news in college basketball history drops. The FBI arrested four NCAA assistant coaches along with “managers, financial advisors, and representatives of a major international sportswear company.” The representative was Jim Gatto, director of global sports marketing for Adidas Basketball, was also arrested. Needless to say this is massive.

The four coaches named were Lamont Evans (Oklahoma State), Chuck Person (Auburn), Emmanuel Richardson (Arizona) and Tony Bland (USC). These are big-time assistant coaches in the college basketball world and obviously all at power-five schools, Evans specifically. He’s coming off a year in which he was part of Brad Underwood’s staff at Oklahoma State’s turnaround and before that was at South Carolina where he recruited PJ Dozier and Sindarius Thornwell.

I was able to find the affidavit against Person, a former NBA player, who spent the last 3 seasons as an assistant coach with Auburn. This stuck out more than anything:

It’s no secret that shoe companies have been pushing kids to certain schools, but it’s usually with the promise of a shoe deal once they declare pro. That’s just how it’s been and no matter what you think of the NCAA, it’s always been that way. However, this is much, much different. This is the first time we’ve seen or heard about the exchange of money to steer athletes one way or another.

The one unique thing here is that the schools names are 3 Nike schools and an Under Armour school, meaning that Adidas rep that’s being arrested has to be connected somewhere else. This is where I think you see the real serious factor come into play. That’s because of this paragraph in the affidavit:

Based on my personal research that school is Louisville. Louisville also happens to be an Adidas school that received a very late, surprising commitment from one of the best players in the class this last offseason. When following along with this, it sure seems like the player is Brian Bowen, a McDonald’s All-American who surprised everyone when he picked Louisville on June 3 (check out the second tweet below).

As we know, Louisville is already in a serious NCAA sanctions case due to hookers. With this now in the loop, the thought of an absolute near death penalty isn’t out of the realm of possibility. To me this is more serious than the kickbacks we saw the four assistant coaches take. This is a direct player to school involvement with a shoe company that resulted in a commitment.

There’s going to be a press conference at noon, and I’ll continue to update this story as news breaks. Right now though, this is going to be a line in the sand in terms of what we know college basketball as. Yeah, this isn’t a surprise as everyone knows there is cheating at every level of college basketball, but now that we have federal charges involved you’ll see changes going forward. I have no idea what they are going to be yet, but you’re going to see something.