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NCAA aggressively seeking information related to college hoops corruption scandal

The NCAA is not able to begin their process until the federal proceedings are over.

Northwestern v Vanderbilt Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images

The NCAA is aggressively seeking information and documentation related to the college hoops corruption scandal, according to Yahoo Sports’ Pete Thamel and Pat Forde.

It has been questionably quiet on the NCAA’s front in regards to the recent federal investigations, but now we know why. NCAA executive vice president and chief legal officer Donald Remy told Yahoo Sports that they have had an incredibly hard time gathering information from federal prosecutors in the case.

The only information the NCAA has received is that which was made public as part of the federal prosecution of Adidas executive Jim Gatto, Adidas consultant Merl Code Jr. and agent-runner Christian Dawkins. That information is only a fraction of the evidence collected by the government.

Remy says the NCAA has remained active in its pursuit of additional information, and they might even attempt asking the court to force the government to hand over evidence.

“We’re actively trying to get that information which we don’t presently have access to,” Remy said. “We’re contemplating asking the court to give us access to additional information that hasn’t yet been presented publicly, the documents and the exhibits [that] haven’t been presented in the courtroom in a way that would provide us or the public with access to that information.

While the second trial is scheduled to start in April, and the third in June, Remy says they aren’t just sitting on their hands and waiting for something to fall into their lap. They have been “aggressively” asking for data and information that might be useful. But they’ve been careful so as not to interfere with the government’s ability to prosecute those cases.

According to Thamel and Forde, the protected information includes approximately 4,000 intercepted phone calls from 330 days of monitoring.

We all know the NCAA’s investigations can take months, or even years. It’s a very lengthy process for a normal case, much less one that has seemingly consumed such a large portion of college basketball.

Moreover, the NCAA wouldn’t estimate a timeframe for their investigation. But they are operating with the understanding that they can’t fully begin their process until the federal proceedings are over.

However, there was a lot of information made public, enough to at least begin handing out punishments. It seems it would behoove the NCAA to get started on this as soon as possible, seeing as we have no idea just how far the corruption has spread.