Paying players is pervasive. But the violations that will potentially land KU in hot water are not as pervasive as you’re asserting because you’re conflating different types of payments into one issue.
The fact is that the government has provided evidence of three types of payments:
- Payments from shoe companies or AAU coaches to entice players to join a specific shoe sponsored AAU team
- Loans / payments to athletes by agents in the hopes that the athlete will sign with the agent once turning pro
- Payments from shoe companies to athletes to steer them to a specific university affiliated with the shoe company
I would agree the payments types 1 and 2 appear pervasive based on the evidence.
However, there has been no evidence thus far to indicate that payment type 3 is as pervasive as you’re implying. No one from Nike has been charged, nor has anyone referenced Nike payments to steer athletes during recruiting to specific universities.
And this is surprising when you consider that Nike was also subpoenaed and Merl Code recently ran Nike’s grassroots basketball. So Code of all people should know if Nike was doing this. And because the defense’s strategy in this case has been to admit everything but argue it’s not a crime, then it stands to reason that if Nike we’re doing this, Code would’ve revealed this. If everyone does it, it strengthens his defense. Perhaps something more comes out, but there’s no evidence yet.
Bowen Sr’s testimony yesterday was also revealing on this point. Dawkins tole Bowen that basically 4 Nike schools and 1 Adidas school were willing to pay. For the Nike schools, Dawkins mentioned coaches made the offers, but for Louisville, he mentioned Adidas would take care of it.
It was also interesting that the 4 Nike schools had vastly different offers. If Nike were driving this, and their only goal is to ensure he signed with a Nike school, it’s unusual that Nike was willing to pay him more to go to a non-basketball school like Ok State than a more traditional power like Arizona.
In fact, those differences seem to indicate to me that it was the schools driving those offers and not Nike. Which would not be surprising when Nike sponsors nearly 70% of major programs. Odds are that kids end up at a Nike school, even without inducements, so there’s less of a need for Nike to pay.
Payment type 3 is the one most likely to cause NCAA issues and it does not appear as pervasive as you’d suggest. But what is clear is that KU is deeply involved with those types of payments.
Now that I got that out of the way,if we go back to the Emmert interview last year(about the time of the start of the conference tournaments) he said more or less that the scope of the cheating was so large that the NCAA wouldn't sanction individual schools and just move on with maybe some new rules in place..I think that was the plan from day one,I doubt that has changed.UL presents the NCAA a problematic issue with Bowen following so closely on the heels of Hookergate.
