The college basketball season, like an idling smuggler’s ship, is set to launch.
There is something very wrong with this sport when its offseason is dominated by the initials FBI rather than RPI. There is something fundamentally off kilter when, on your next trip to the post office, you half-expect to see a photo of some guy with a whistle and a whiteboard up there among the other most wanted.
Even before they ceremonially threw out the first ticky-tack foul call of the season there came the announcement that the Feds were poking around the feed troughs of college hoops. Indictments were issued. Rick Pitino was finally brought down under Louisville’s tough twelve-strikes-and-you’re-out standard. And a great unease settled in over the whole of college basketball, as coaches from coast to coast wondered who might be the next to fall now that pimping out hypertrophic teenagers was considered a news-conference-worthy charge.
Georgia Tech’s Josh Pastner, as anyone with a working nose, realized there are things that don’t smell right in college ball. “But not at the FBI level. No one thought it was a federal offense,” he said during Wednesday’s ACC basketball media scrum.
“When that happened,” he said, referring to federal charges of bribery and corruption brought against a group of assistant coaches, a shoe company exec and player representatives, “it was a punch in the gut to every person in college basketball as a coach, head coach or assistant. Wait a second – now you’re changing it from an NCAA violation to where you can lose your freedom.”
The scheme in question involved a particularly slimy and cynical arrangement whereby a shoe company – in this case Adidas – made big payouts to steer top recruits to schools that featured its product. And then on to friendly agents who might keep them shod in the proper brand.
It created the image of programs run not by their high-minded institutions or by the NCAA, but rather by Big Shoe.
As you might suspect, this was a big topic Wednesday at a congress of media and ACC coaches, some of the latter quite famous.
That issue does not dominate just here, either. Back in Atlanta, Pastner said, his next-door neighbor, who before showed zero interest in his profession, suddenly wanted to know everything about this scandal.
The deans of ACC basketball were asked their thoughts, but neither Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski nor North Carolina’s Roy Williams seemed appalled by the developments.
Coach K, in fact, deemed the FBI intervention an invitation to better his game. “I think it’s an opportunity, to be quite frank with you. I don’t think it’s a bad time. In some respects, it could be one of the most productive times in the history of our game, especially in the recent history of our game,” he said.
The NCAA did what it is best at, and formed a commission to study the problem.
Eventually this may lead to the end of the one-and-done, and free the most gifted high school players to skip the sham and go directly to the NBA or a developmental league. But nothing happens quickly.
It may subtly alter the relationship between Big Shoe and college basketball. The NCAA might wrest back some control of showcasing of elite high school talent. Although Krzyzewski maintained that “the involvement of the shoe companies is paramount to the success of college sports.” And paramount to the enrichment of coaches, it must be said.
Williams pretty much averred that whatever the rules, somebody is going to try to break them.
“You can’t legislate honesty. You can’t legislate morality. And there’s not one fix for it,” North Carolina’s coach said.
Overall, there was on display Wednesday a real lack of outrage concerning the events of a month ago. Little energy to devote to table-pounding anger over the corruption of a small percentage of the best players – the ones who didn’t belong in college, if only the rules didn’t force them down that road.
Meanwhile, in other news, Tech is coming off its surprising run to the NIT championship game and could be kind of a fun story to track this season, once the muck hardens a bit.
Yes, the college basketball season will go on. It will not be shamed.
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