Tuesday, the FBI shocked the sports world by announcing bribery and fraud charges against four prominent college basketball assistant coaches and six peripheral hoops figures, implicating Adidas in a player-payments scheme, putting NCAA-probation’d Louisville in some really dangerous territory, and promising more names to come.
Will the FBI’s college basketball probe eventually expand to football? If so, it’d look a little different
In football, the secret money tends to involve smaller names and titles than in hoops.
The shock wasn’t learning how college hoops works. The sport long ago turned over its pre-college circuit to shoe companies and agency runners. It was jarring to see the breadth of the investigation, to notice the level of detail and leak-proof professionalism that an NCAA investigation typically lacks, and to realize the feds cared about routine recruiting transactions in the first place. Oh, and we got hard numbers for what star one-and-dones can make up front: $100,000 and $150,000, in a couple cases.
So far, the probe includes only basketball, at least publicly. When FBI assistant director William Sweeney said, “we have your playbook,” he was referring to hoops’ use of eventual apparel sponsorship deals to steer recruits toward certain universities. That’s been a hidden-in-plain-sight element of college basketball that’s rarely even been alleged in, say, football.
Football payments to players are a little less structured. It still happens, and allegations of six-figure offers still abound. But in football, the NCAA-created black market is filled less by apparel/agency types who want to make money and more by sports fans who want to see their teams win (and yeah, there are exceptions on both sides). With that, we turn once again to Steven Godfrey’s “Meet the Bag Man:”
Even when I asked for and received proof -- in this case a phone call I watched him make to a number I independently verified, then a meeting in which I witnessed cash handed to an active SEC football player -- it’s just cash changing hands. When things are done correctly, there’s no proof more substantial than one man’s word over another. That allows for plausible deniability, which is good enough for the coaches, administrators, conference officials, and network executives. And the man I officially didn’t speak with was emphatic that no one really understands how often and how well it almost always works.
These men are fans who believe they’re leveraging football success $500 or $50,000 at a time. I can’t show you that money, and neither can anyone else. You might think you see the money -- a flash of $20 bills all over some kid’s Instagram or Facebook update -- but that’s just money.
This is the arrangement in high-stakes college football, though of course not every player is paid for. Providing cash and benefits to players is not a scandal or a scheme, merely a function. And when you start listening to the stories, you understand the function can never be stopped.
It’d be simplistic to say “college hoops is a business, while college football is a cult,” but that’d at least get you on the right track.
So will the FBI eventually turn its attention to football as well? Well, the feds like pointing big fingers at big targets, and they don’t do so unless they know they have convictions all but laced up already. Paper-bag handshakes by Hank at the Toyota lot and Brother Jimmy at Third Baptist aren’t exactly takedown trophies on the level of an Adidas exec.
The FBI nabbed flagrant Miami booster Nevin Shapiro, but that was for his role in a Ponzi scheme, not his seven-figure contributions to the Hurricanes. Otherwise, football facilitators try to lay low.
I mean, we used this as part of the “Bag Man” artwork:
I’ve seen federales at Waffle Houses before, but the types of scandals that emerge from beloved diner chains tend to revolve around one customer shooting down another’s drone at 3 a.m., rather than career-building investigative material.
But we’ll see. Unless the FBI eventually expands this to all of college sports, uncovers something major in football, or goes after the NCAA itself, I’d guess football walks away from this minimally scathed in the public’s mind, while college hoops is forever tainted by, uh, everything we already knew about revenue college athletics being confirmed.
More college football
- The FBI’s also set up a snitchin’ hotline for people with information on college sports cheating. That sounds like the worst job on Earth.
- Why Penn State’s a national title contender as long as Saquon Barkley’s on the field.
- What college coaches have had to say about players protesting during game events.
- What to know about a college sports scandal with actual victims: Florida’s credit card fraud ring.
- Remember when Maryland played a linebacker at QB? Yeah, something like that might happen again to the Terps.
- Researchers might’ve found a way to diagnose CTE in living patients.
- Why two Buckeyes high-fived each other while running routes.
- Texas students to vote on whether to play the Aggies again, not that students are in charge.
- Purdue and Jim Harbaugh yapped at each other over locker room quality.
- Mark Stoops plans to fix Kentucky’s habit of giving up uncovered touchdowns by assigning multiple pairs of eyes in the sky.
- Let’s check in on the COLLEGE FOOTBALL IMPERIALISM map, where Penn State has laid claim to the Upper Heartland.
- We’d like you to watch Jadeveon Clowney show a couple kids his Steve Spurrier impression.
