Jury reaches verdict in college hoops trial

The jury has reached a verdict in the college hoops trial. After three days of deliberations, the jury found all three Adidas defendants guilty on all counts:

This essentially means that the jury did believe that the college basketball programs involved, were in fact, the victims in these cases. This does not, however, mean that these schools are innocent, per se, but there were three victim schools listed; Louisville, Kansas, and North Carolina State. Remember, they are victim schools because of a wire-fraud, federal crime, but the attorneys of the three defendants did still admit to breaking NCAA rules and committing violations by playing the families of players for all three aforementioned schools (Brian Bowen at UofL, Silvio De Sousa at Kansas, and Dennis Smith Jr. at NC State.)

Now, the NCAA has to figure out what to do in terms of punishments for the programs and players involved, seeing as how this was just for a federal crime ruling and not an actual NCAA ruling. The NCAA certainly has a lot of questions to answer such as: How hard will they come down on LSU and Will Wade? Will Kansas and Bill Self be punished? These are answers that we will have to wait and see. Just earlier today, Kansas announced that Silvio De Sousa was being withheld from all basketball activities while they wait for NCAA ruling and to clear De Sousa’s name.

Here is what Adidas had to say on the matter:

University of Kansas Chancellor, Douglas Girod, released this statement earlier regarding the verdict and the potential NCAA investigation, in which he said they will work and cooperate with the NCAA to the fullest extent when the time comes.

While these schools were found to be the victim, the players still did take money, and in some cases, the coaches did know about it (LSU, Kansas, Louisville) so I do expect a punishment from the NCAA. If the NCAA does not issue one, then they’re spineless. It’s just a waiting game now.