By criminalizing violations in college sports, the US Department of Justice will make it so that it is not just the NCAA who runs the market but the state as well
A bombshell was dropped on the college basketball world this week as an FBI probe into the seedy underbelly of the sport has resulted in the arrest of 10 men, including four high-level assistant coaches under charges of “bribery conspiracy, solicitation of bribes, honest services fraud conspiracy, honest service fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and Travel Act conspiracy.”
That laundry list of charges is impressive, but for those with any experience in how the world of college sports really works, it should come as no surprise. Under-the-table cash contributions to entice players to come play college sports has been a reality of the game ever since its inception. It was true in the 1980s, when Southern Methodist University earned the NCAA’s death penalty because it failed to properly cover up its payments to 21 different athletes. It was true in the 1940s, when American University officials blew the whistle on postwar attempts to recruit players to college football squads with bribes. It was even true in the first decade of the 1900s, the earliest period of the organization that would become today’s NCAA, when McClure’s magazine broke the news that Ivy League schools were fielding teams of “phantom students,” and that Yale coach Walter Camp had a $100,000 slush fund from the school.
Related: Bribery and kickbacks: the FBI's college basketball sting has only just begun
[Chuck] PERSON and [Rashan] MICHEL, and others known and unknown, participated in a scheme to defraud by telephone, email and wire transfer of funds, among other means and methods, University-1 by facilitating and concealing bribe payments to student-athletes at University-1 and/or their families, thereby causing University-1 to continue to provide athletic scholarships to student-athletes who, in truth and in fact, were ineligible to compete as a result of the bribe payments.
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