A jury on Wednesday convicted the three defendants accused of pay-for-play schemes to influence high-profile basketball recruits to attend Kansas, Louisville and NC State.
Gatto, Code and Dawkins were accused of felony charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud by paying money from Adidas to the families of recruits to ensure they signed with Adidas-sponsored schools, and then with the sneaker company and certain financial planners and agents once they turned pro.
Bad look for ACC as four of its schools involved in embarassing behavior recently: Louisvlle & NC State now, UNC's class fraud scandel and UVA losing to a 16th seed.
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At least there are criminal charges for fraud.
Very important distinction to make here: NC State and Louisville were not found guilty.
The trial was against two Adidas employees and an aspiring agent. They were found guilty of defrauding NC State and Louisville by making players ineligible through paying those players without NC State or Louisville's approval.
It's interesting that Duke hasn't popped up in this. Williamson turned down big cash to go to Duke, instead. I have a hard time believing that he did so, just because K is a charming guy.
And its likely literally nothing will happen to any schools over this. A few coaches lost jobs, but no school will be punished, even though you know they all actively participated.
Just another reason why the NCAA needs to drop this amateur bullshit and start distributing the money to the kids.
Nope. Because, as I've said before and will die on a hill for, the moment any kids start getting paid Congress (both parties) WILL step in and try to make all of the public schools pay the women's LAX players the same as the football players and will try to do the same to the private schools. And the walk-ons on every sport will likely also have to be paid because of EEOC.
Most schools can't even afford to pay their starting football and basketball players and will probably have to fold up if this change ever happens. And if it does, then athletic scholarships should become taxable income because at that point the players just became employees of the school - most of whom would be state employees, and thus entitled to state benefits.
A better idea is to just let them market their image. No risk of Title IX/Congressional involvement. No "they just became employees of the school/state". No worrying about how this affects state budgets. Etc.
Why would it be an issue if all athletes got paid the same amount? The women's soccer team or the men's golf team puts in just as many hours training, conditioning, traveling, etc as football players. I know that football brings in the most revenue, but if athletes are paid for their time, then it should be the same.
Let's use your logic to a similar, but different scenario. In any other business, people with different jobs get paid differently, even though they work for the same company, regardless of whether or not they work the same amount of time. Part of this has to do with the amount of revenue your specific job creates for that company. Managers are worth more to a company than janitors are, even though the janitors work hard and provide a necesssary service. Pretty much everyone understands and is on board with this.
See how your argument totally falls apart due to flawed reasoning? And then we can get into the simple math involved to see why paying every player is a bad idea. Every athletic department would go bankrupt. Even Texas, and they have more money than the Vatican.
If this ever does become a thing, it will be interesting to see how Title IX comes into play. There are a lot of questions to be answered there, as right now all we have are opinions of how the law could or would be interpreted. It could quite easily be interpreted that "equal opportunity" means equal pay. You can easily make a case that fairness pushes things in that direction as well.
Who knows how that one will work out?
I understand your argument, but I also understand equality. Paying football/basketball players more will never fly with Title IX, so it's really not a discussion.
Depends on how that would be implemented - just because there's "clean" money involved doesn't mean it'll get rid of the dirty money.
So....no one cares? I don't. Do you?
No?
Sweet, let's go back to pretending this doesn't happen and just watch 'ball, don't at me.
Wiretap audio from college hoops trial details pay schemes (ESPN)
Audio and transcripts included
The three defendants that were found guilty in this case received slaps on the wrists from the judge.
The judge then took one more step to show his disdain for this trial even being brought to his court
Not sure how the government can justify pursuing the remaining cases in this matter based on the astronomical costs of the investigation and prosecution to get such a small return.
One reason many are speculating on as the reason for the small sentences is Who are the victims in these cases?
Not one of the schools that have been implicated in this scandal has sought to have their apparel contracts with Adidas cancelled. Louisville is still getting their $16M annually from Adidas.
Going to be interesting to see what happens going forward with any additional cases.
That's a shame. Courts basically saying carry on, just be more careful.