Premiere programs rocked by bribery, player payment scandals
Louisville possibly among Power 5 conference schools involved in illicit activity
At one major university, a sports agent arranged for a quid pro quo among Adidas, the college’s men’s basketball program and a top high school prospect in which the player’s family would receive $100,000 if he committed to the school and signed with the apparel giant once he turned pro.
At another college, the basketball team’s associate head coach accepted nearly $100,000 to steer his team’s top players to a financial adviser eager to manage their future NBA riches. At a third, a top assistant set up a similar arrangement, promising to trade his access to players for bribes.
These and many more allegations were revealed in a series of complaints made public by federal investigators in New York on Tuesday. The complaints depict a thriving black market for teenage athletes, one in which coaches, agents, financial advisers and shoe company employees trade on the trust of players and exploit their inability to be openly compensated because of NCAA amateurism rules.
“For these men, bribing coaches was a business investment,” Joon H. Kim, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said while announcing federal bribery, fraud and other corruption charges. “They knew corrupt coaches, in return for bribes, would pressure the players to use their services. They also knew that if and when those young players turned pro, that would mean big bucks for them.”
This vision of what Kim called “the dark underbelly of college
basketball” led to the arrests of nearly a dozen people, including four Division I assistant coaches and the global marketing director for Adidas basketball. Kim said the investigation was continuing.
Across three complaints, two broad schemes were alleged. One involved bribing four assistant coaches — at Arizona, Auburn, Oklahoma State and Southern California, all programs in the so-called Power 5 conferences of college sports — to persuade players to send business to certain financial advisers once they turned professional. The other involved efforts to secretly funnel money from Adidas to three players and their families in exchange for the players’ commitments to play at two Adidas-sponsored college programs and to later sign sponsorship deals with the company once they turned pro.
The latter complaint said an Adidas executive, Jim Gatto, was in on an agreement to pay about $100,000 to the family of “Player-10,” a heavily recruited high school standout, to steer him to a particular college. While neither the player nor the university was named, descriptions of the institution matched the University of Louisville, which this summer signed a 10-year, $160 million apparel contract with Adidas. Louisville’s men’s basketball program is on probation over a scandal in which prostitutes were used to entice recruits.
In the first scheme, one complaint charged that Chuck Person, the associate head coach at Auburn, abused his coaching position to solicit and obtain bribes from a financial adviser and business manager for professional athletes. In return, he agreed to direct certain players from his program to the adviser when the players entered the NBA.
The other complaint charged the other three assistant coaches with solicitation of bribery for accepting payments to steer players. The coaches named are Lamont Evans, an assistant at Oklahoma State and a former assistant at South Carolina; Emanuel Richardson, an assistant at Arizona; and Tony Bland, an assistant at the University of Southern California.
All three, and Person, have been suspended, their programs announced Tuesday.
The NCAA president, Mark Emmert, also was caught off guard by Tuesday morning’s announcement but pledged his organization’s support. “Coaches hold a unique position of trust with student-athletes and their families and these bribery allegations, if true, suggest an extraordinary and despicable breach of that trust,” Emmert said.
The complaints did not implicate any head coaches, perhaps for reasons explained by one of the defendants in an audio recording of a secret meeting. According to a transcript of comments by the defendant, an agent named Christian Dawkins, the path to securing commitments from college athletes went through assistant coaches, because head coaches “ain’t willing” to take bribes, “’cause they’re making too much money. And it’s too risky.”
Louisville was punished for the prostitute scandal in June, when the NCAA placed the Cardinals on probation, suspended coach Rick Pitino for five games and ordered the university to forfeit what could be dozens of games — potentially including the Cardinals’ 2013 national championship. Those sanctions were announced June 15 — less than two weeks, Tuesday’s complaint claimed, after a Louisville coach is accused of taking part in the plan to funnel $100,000 to the allAmerican recruit.
The complaints announced Tuesday also included clues indicating that what was alleged is the tip of the iceberg. Dawkins, for example, urged that the payment to a player’s family be increased because one of Adidas’ rivals was “coming in with a higher number.”
The complaints announced also included clues indicating that what was alleged is the tip of the iceberg. Agent Christian Dawkins urged that a payment to a player’s family be increased because one of Adidas’ rivals was “coming in with a higher number.”