Corruption case won’t stop Selection Sunday

RALEIGH, N.C. » College basketball has spent an entire season operating amid the specter of an FBI corruption investigation that led to criminal charges against assistant coaches, agents, apparel company employees and others.

The scandal rocked the sport, which seemed set to implode.

It still might, but it won’t impact Selection Sunday this weekend.

Many named or connected to the probe will hear their teams called when the March Madness field of 68 is unveiled.

“March Madness and the Final Four, it’s supposed to be one of the best times to be a sports fan,” said Michael L. Buckner, a Florida-based attorney who has worked on infractions cases. “This is when men’s basketball is celebrated — it takes over sports for that one month through the first week of April. It takes over the fascination of everybody, even people who aren’t college basketball fans.

“Now it’s going to have this cloud hanging over it, so that’s why I say it’s a little surreal.”

The fallout from the projected storm has been minimal on the court. Only a few have been penalized in a case tied to hundreds of thousands of dollars in alleged bribes and kickbacks designed to influence recruits on choosing a school or an agent.

Selection committee chairman Bruce Rasmussen has said the federal investigation won’t

be a factor in determining tournament invitations.

“Our committee is intensely focused on selecting and seeding and bracketing the right 68 teams,” said Rasmussen, Creighton’s athletic director. “We’re not going to pay any attention to that because it’s not in the purview of our committee.”

So the three-week tournament could have a business-as-usual feel to it.

It’s been that way in college basketball since federal prosecutors announced in September that they had charged 10 men , including assistant coaches at Arizona, Auburn, USC and Oklahoma State along with a top Adidas executive, in the fraud and bribery scandal. Prosecutors have since withdrawn the criminal complaint against one defendant, the rest are all out on bond and all four charged assistant coaches have been fired.