The FBI Investigation Into College Basketball One Year Later
One year ago today we woke up to the news that there was an FBI investigation into college basketball. At the time we had no idea what the hell to expect. We just knew there was some sort of investigation and as the news trickled out that there were assistant coaches arrested, we started to hear more details.
So with that in mind, let’s recap the last year and what the fallout has been from the FBI investigation. You see it’s been out of people’s minds because it didn’t take down college basketball like we all thought. It wasn’t some massive fallout where every major team in the NCAA went on sanctions.
Coaches involved: 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.
Others involved: Munish Sood (financial adviser), James Gatto (marketing for Adidas), Merl Code (Adidas executive), Christian Dawkins (agent runner), Brad Augustine (former director of 1-Family AAU).
Schools involved: Auburn, USC, Arizona, Louisville, Oklahoma State, Maryland, NC State, Kansas
Players affected: De’Anthony Melton (USC – missed last year), Austin Wiley (Auburn – missed last year), Danjel Purifoy (Auburn – missed last year), Brian Bowen (South Carolina/Louisville – never played a game), Jeffrey Carroll (Oklahoma State – missed some time early)
Players rumored to be involved from FBI affidavit: Dennis Smith Jr. (NC State), Silvio de Sousa (Kansas), Taeshon Cherry (USC)
Coaches Fired: Rick Pitino (Louisville)
Notable notes:
-Munish Sood has plead guilty already to felony conspiracy to commit bribery, honest services fraud and travel act expenses. This is a guy who was the CEO of a financial advisory company and is accused of bribing three of the assistant coaches – Tony Bland, Book Richardson and Lamont Evans. Whenever more details come out in terms of what Sood testifies, the question will be does he try to drag anyone else into it.
– Charges were dropped against Brad Augustine. Brad Augustine, the former director of the 1-Family AAU program in Florida had all charges dropped against him. So what’s the fucked up part? They were dropped because he admitted he was going to keep the money for himself. That’s right. In the eyes of the law, etc, it’s not wrong for Augustine or someone else in that sort of power to take money, direct players towards the person who gave them said money and just pocket it all. Augustine’s claim was he only planned on defrauding Adidas executive Jim Gatto when Augustine was reportedly given $150,000 to sway a player to a specific school.
– A lead agent being a degenerate could cost this investigation. Under the so-called Brady rule, prosecutors are required to disclose to the defense materially exculpatory evidence—that is, evidence favorable to the accused. In this case, when defense lawyers for some of the accused parties received the government’s Brady disclosures, the document contained reference to the man who went by Jeff DeAngelo. Referring to the agent by his true name, the government conceded that the operation’s central figure stood accused of misappropriating investigative funds earmarked for the operation and spending the money on gambling, food and beverages during the probe.
– Court cases begin next month. Gatto, Code and Dawkins are all scheduled to start trial on October 1, but this could be delayed. The assistant coaches involved are scheduled through April 2019. Hint: this is going to take a long, long time.
Results
– The Rice Commission on College Basketball was formed because of this. Due to that it led to some of the dumbest things I’ve heard in the sport – but, hey, what can I expect when you bring in people who don’t know the college basketball game to try and fix it? It’s leading to changes in recruiting, which is only hurting players and not helping them. That’s because the Rice Commission has no idea how grassroots basketball works. There’s also a call to change the one-and-done rule because the Rice Commission thinks that’s the reason why college basketball is dealing with this. I hate the Rice Commission.
– Louisville fired Tom Jurich and Rick Pitino, leading to the hire of Chris Mack from Xavier.
– All of the teams involved lost major recruits following the release of information. Some notable ones were: Jahvon Quinerly decommitting from Arizona and ending up at Villanova. Shareef O’Neal from Arizona to UCLA. Romeo Langford dropped Louisville from his list. Anfernee Simons decided against Louisville to go direct to the NBA.
– And, uh, well that’s really it. As I mentioned there was no downfall of college hoops. We’re still waiting to see what happens during the court cases. Will more names be called out? Will there be more of an investigation? We haven’t even heard anything from the NCAA, only the FBI. That’s the key to remember here. The NCAA has yet to put out any sanctions nor any investigation.
– The biggest problem from this has yet to be addressed. Name, likeness and image payment. We’ll wait to see if that ever gets brought up.