Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: College Basketball Trial State Of Play Edition

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the Big Blue Nation, and welcome to the Tuesday Morning Quickies.

Today, we are going to take a look at a few of the issues surrounding the FBI trial of alleged corruption in college basketball going on in the Southern District of New York’s federal jurisdiction.

Michael McCann of Sports Illustrated is my go-to analyst for NCAA legal issues because of his unusual ability to examine cases without interjecting is personal bias into the subject. It is a rare thing to find today, and I recommend his work to you unreservedly.

Today, McCann helps explain the prosecution’s theory of the crime, which raises some rather interesting issues. To wit:

First, the Justice Department contends that payoffs to recruits defraud the universities that enroll those recruits. This might seem paradoxical: why would universities complain about enrolling superstar basketball players who were aggressively recruited by rival programs? The reason, the Justice Department argues, begins when the recruit accepts a payoff. It is at that moment when he becomes, at least in principle, ineligible to play NCAA basketball. While the recruit’s transgression might never be exposed, and thus he might go on to a superficially successful NCAA career, he remains an on-going compliance risk to any school that enrolls him. This is true even after he is no longer a student at the school. [my emphasis]

So the idea is that by paying players, the alleged perpetrators are creating poison pills which, if discovered, defraud unknowing schools by forcing the NCAA to sanction them, damaging them both financially and reputationally.

Second, the Justice Department insists that the conspirators interfered with targeted schools’ ability to “control their assets”—a term of art that includes distribution of finite scholarships and financial aid packages. Had the colleges not been deceived in enrolling ineligible recruits, they could have directed these “assets” to recruits who were both in appearance and in actuality complying with NCAA rules. While those “other recruits” might not have been five-star talents like Bowen and Smith, they did not jeopardize the schools that ultimately enrolled them with the potential hazard of NCAA sanctions.

Restating this, essentially the alleged perpetrators are corruptly denying schools the transparency they need to decide which recruits to go after in order to avoid running afoul of the NCAA.

McCann goes into more detail about how difficult this theory will be to prove, and you should read the whole thing, because it is very informative and helpful in examining these and other important issues. My points, however, begin to diverge here.

With all this in mind, here is a thought exercise for you: How does the NCAA deal with these issues?

Let’s say that the government successfully proves the defendants committed the alleged crime under the theory the prosecution puts forth. Let’s further say the the jury convicts them on all, or at least most, substantive counts. What is the proper response by the NCAA?

We all know that the NCAA, to use a construction that criminally understates the reality, isn’t among the favorite institutions of the sports-watching public. So how, exactly, do they punish schools who, according to a jury, have been unlawfully deceived with the intent to harm them both financially and reputationally by outside interests, and the vehicle for that damage is — wait for it — the NCAA, who must now decide how to punish the actual fraud victims?

This Kafkaesque situation could become very real if there are convictions in this trial. If, as the defendants and even yours truly expects, it becomes impossible to get 12 jurors to agree with this convoluted theory, the NCAA will just punish the schools as per normal, and only the school’s partisans will use the government’s theory as exculpatory.

But if the schools were the victims, how is it right to punish them? This is the catch-22 facing the NCAA upon potential conviction, and it will become even more apparently outrageous if they construct this as some kind of “strict liability” situation. There is a limit to how unpopular an institution can become before real action is taken to correct the situation, and this just may be the last straw.

So if the government wins, the NCAA, it appears to me, loses. How droll.

Tweet of the Morning

Rest in peace.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Kentucky prepping for a very hungry Vanderbilt on Saturday. Nice record, kids. Don’t get cocky.
• Josh Paschal is recovering from his surgery to remove malignant melanoma, and has been cleared to do some light running.
• Mark Story previews Kentucky vs. Vanderbilt.
• Kentucky has a legitimate shot at reaching the SEC Championship game this season.

Kentucky basketball

• KSR recruiting analysts updates UK recruiting, including James Wiseman and Vernon Carey.
• Yep.

Other Kentucky sports

• No. 5/3 Kentucky plays Ohio State in its final road trip of the year today.
• Former UK track star Sydney McLaughlin signs with New Balance shoes and apparel after “huge bidding war.”

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Tuesday Wildcat Links

College football

• This week in schadenfreude: Is Georgia already collapsing?
• Iowa State band performance attacked by a pack of velociraptors! Oh wait, a pack of T-Rex?
• Buyouts are becoming more and more important in college football — and much more expensive.
• College football empires has Florida taking over large section of the USA.

College basketball

• The eleven mid-majors who could do damage in the NCAA Tournament brackets this season. My alma mater, Western Kentucky, is among the notables. Also, UNC Greensboro, who UK plays this season is listed.
• Sports Illustrated has an AAC conference preview, including the strengths and weaknesses of each team. What strikes me as how far UConn has fallen. Seems their high-water mark was versus Kentucky.
• Mike Krzyzewski thinks college basketball is “…actually pretty clean.” A lot of cynics are mocking this statement in the media, but I think he’s more right than wrong.
• Kentucky’s name dragged into the FBI college basketball trial in New York, but only in passing. It was always inevitable.

Other sports news

• Johnny Miller, unapologetic tell-it-like-it-is golf analyst for NBC, is retiring from broadcasting. He will be missed. Miller was a great player and maybe the most entertaining and honest golf analyst ever.
• Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has died. Rest in peace. He also had a big hand in the NBA:

Other news

• Three giant asteroids headed toward earth will pass today.
• Milky Way could be spreading life from star to star.
• Our solar system is even stranger than we thought.