Keith Strudler: Sports And The Feds

This is a story about the federal government getting involved in sports. It’s about using massive power and influence against some of the biggest names and institutions in the game. It will outrage fans and perhaps even cost people their jobs.

I’m talking, of course, about yesterday’s revelations from a three year FBI probe into a select group of college basketball coaches committing fraud in creating an illegal economy between top athletes, shoe companies, agents, and their universities. In other words, the affirmation of what everyone long assumed true about big time college sports. And yes, I know that’s not what you were thinking.

The allegations, revealed yesterday by federal prosecutors in New York, accuse a handful of coaches, and in one a case a shoe company employee, of constructing an effective black market around the handing of young star basketball players, a market that funneled kids from high school to college to respective shoe companies and agents, all circumventing both their cloak of amateurism, pretty much all NCAA rules, and, as relevant here, the law. The allegations take two general pathways. In one stream, college coaches took money from agents to push their top, pro-bound athletes their direction. So for example, it’s alleged that particular assistant coaches received offers of big money under the table from financial planners – say $100,000 – to ensure their top athletes signed with them once they got to the league. In a second series of allegations, representatives from shoe companies – Adidas in particular – worked with a college coach to pay a family a big hunk of cash – again, around $100,000 – to both sign with their university and then a subsequent shoe deal with Adidas when they hit the NBA. It’s a classic quid pro quo that now leaves both universities and the larger institution of major college sports exposed to countless critiques, both legal and moral.

One of the accused universities is basketball power Louisville, who’s still reeling from a scandal that involved basketball coaches arranging for strippers and prostitutes to entertain prospective athletes on campus during recruiting visits. Not surprisingly, Louisville’s head coach Rick Pitino is shocked of the allegations. And, if true, he says he’s committed to ensuring all guilty parties are held accountable. Which, I’m certain he believes does not include himself.

Only 10 people are named in the first round of accusations, but it’s likely far more are coming as the inquiry widens. It would be hard to believe that only a very small number of coaches and programs and agents engage in illicit practices while everyone else plays by the rules. So it’s fair to possibly see this as the tip of the metaphoric iceberg, if the iceberg was actually a giant well of money.

It’s not hard to identify the problem here, even though a lot of people may not want to. This is not, as coach Pitino suggested, the work of a few bad actors, even if those accused may have indeed acted poorly and it seems outside the law. The problem underlying that illicit activity is enormous economic pressure in a system that won’t release the steam valve. Basically, what shoe companies and agents – and let’s be clear, agents are often just above loan sharks in Dante’s Inferno – all they really want it to make money off the athletic grandeur of star players. In a free market, they’d pay the going rate for that privilege. Which they do, once an athlete goes pro. But since NCAA rules prohibit free market extending to high school and college athletes, people like agents and shoe marketers take a less direct, and in this case illegal approach. Which makes college coaches – especially assistant coaches responsible both for recruiting minutiae and the vast underbelly of their programs, and who are far more susceptible to bribes given their lower salaries than their bosses, these coaches are the weak link in system designed seemingly to be broken. I’m sure Adidas would love a more efficient way to sign the next great super star to a shoe deal. But right now, it’s just not allowed.

That, instead of the low moral character of coaches or individual players and athletes and families, that’s the reason there’s more illicit money than you’d see in a Johnny Dep movie about the 70’s. There’s a relatively easy answer to this – relative being the key word. Get rid of the arcane rules of amateurism, let athletes own their likeness, and eliminate the middleman. This would, of course, disrupt college sports as we know it. Which most Americans, including most notably the universities themselves, aren’t excited about.

Which means despite this bombshell of a report, the result will be a familiar narrative. Penalties, admonitions, and promises of reform – all Band-Aids without any kind of cure. Which means we can expect to see the federal government involved in sports again sometime in the future. We should be used to that by now.

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