Shoe money trial

[jfish26]

Meh. Not surprised and don't really care because I don't think the act of the recruits/families getting money is "wrong".

...but I suspect some people who refused to accept this has been going on for decades will be/act shocked.

I'm guessing this is as bad as they've got on us. Thankfully no wiretap stuff.

I hope so. But that the texts are in play enlarges the variance for us, for sure; if we were dumb enough to say this stuff by text to Gassnola, what else is there?

[sdoyel]

Well, he's done testifying so we may never know.

[jfish26]

Well, he's done testifying so we may never know.

This is hardly the only person who could have information, and hardly the last time this issue might be in play in legal proceedings.

[NewtonHawk11]

Fish's tone on this has taken a turn on this. And he knows law stuff. So now I'm officially worried.

[jfish26]

If my tone has changed, it's not because of any "law stuff" necessarily. It's just common sense that the closer Self and his staff can be shown to have been to the payments, the easier it would be for the NCAA to take a swing at us. My (relative) sense of comfort that nothing will happen to us really depended on the case against us being a couple steps away; documentary evidence (as opposed to testimonial evidence) changes things a bit.

[columbusdjkc]

Is it really a concern though? All those texts are pretty vague. Money wasn’t discussed so the key issue still isn’t an issue? So what if they talk about recruits? Nothing illegal about it. Now I get we probably did some shady stuff but it doesn’t matter what people think it matters what people can prove and I don’t think just based on those texts that anyone can prove anything.

[jfish26]

Is it really a concern though? All those texts are pretty vague. Money wasn’t discussed so the key issue still isn’t an issue? So what if they talk about recruits? Nothing illegal about it. Now I get we probably did some shady stuff but it doesn’t matter what people think it matters what people can prove and I don’t think just based on those texts that anyone can prove anything.

Agree 100% - I'm just less confident now than I was this morning about the likelihood that there won't be a true smoking gun.

[columbusdjkc]

Is it really a concern though? All those texts are pretty vague. Money wasn’t discussed so the key issue still isn’t an issue? So what if they talk about recruits? Nothing illegal about it. Now I get we probably did some shady stuff but it doesn’t matter what people think it matters what people can prove and I don’t think just based on those texts that anyone can prove anything.

Agree 100% - I'm just less confident now than I was this morning about the likelihood that there won't be a true smoking gun.

Yeah I can see the fear there for sure but wouldn’t the case be different if a smoking gun existed? You would think they would have Self on the same side as Gatto. I don’t think the NCAA “investigators” are better then federal investigators.

[jfish26]

The problem is that the investigation here is designed not to find a smoking gun (like a text from a coach to a shoe company guy saying, "hey, give Recruit X enough money to pick my school").

Indeed, to torture the conceit, the bullet from such a smoking gun would blow the prosecution's case to bits, because the prosecution's case - the case that the investigators have been seeking to support - is that the schools and programs themselves were defrauded into playing ineligible players.

If a school/program knew the players were going to be ineligible, then they haven't been defrauded, meaning there's no underlying crime to support the wire fraud/conspiracy charges.

I really hadn't thought this one through - it is very much to these defendants' benefit to prove that schools/programs/coaches knew about these payments, were complicit in these payments, directed these payments. So it makes me exceedingly nervous that this one guy can produce documentary evidence of Self+staff being sort of close, because this isn't the last guy.

[Mjl]

I was optimistic about this whole thing before today.

Now I think we're fucked.

[jfish26]

I think the steroid stuff in MLB will prove to be instructive as to how all of this will play out. KU needs to just say as little as possible and let the rest of the facts come out (specifically: how what KU did/was involved in was par for the course and not atypical or unusual). KU's best defense here (not against charged of whether rules were broken - of course they were - but against an enforcement action) truly is that everyone was doing it.

[jfish26]

Texts between Kansas coach Bill Self and ex-Adidas rep show how high-level college basketball recruiting works

The Kansas coach wanted Adidas' help, in part, because he believed Nike was helping Duke and North Carolina

https://www.cbssports.com/college-baske ... ing-works/

"In my mind, it's KU, Bill Self. Everyone else fall into line. Too (expletive) bad," Gassnola replied. "That's what's right for Adidas basketball. And I know I'm right. The more you have lottery picks and you happy. That's how it should work in my mind."

"That's how ur (sic) works. At UNC and Duke," Self replied.

Gassnola answered by saying Kentucky as well.

"I promise you I got this," Gassnola texted. "I have never let you down. Except (Deandre). Lol. We will get it right."

What that exchange features is Gassnola essentially promising Self that he'll help him land five-star prospects because Kansas is Adidas' biggest basketball program and what's good for Kansas is good for Adidas. Gassnola assures Self he will deliver because he's never previously let him down -- except for that time with Deandre Ayton, the five-star center who enrolled at Arizona, a Nike school, even though Gassnola paid one of Ayton's friends $15,000, according to testimony last week. And Self welcomes the help from Adidas because, he believes, North Carolina and Duke get similar help from Nike. So does Kentucky, Gassnola proclaims.

Simply put, this has been college basketball for a while.

Self was right.

That's how it works.

[...]

And this is a point I've made for over a year now -- since the day Jim Gatto, Merl Code, Christian Dawkins and seven other men were charged with federal crimes via an ongoing investigation into corruption in college basketball -- the point that shoe-company assistance, regardless of what's right or wrong, was largely considered acceptable behavior in the sport before the government said it's not.

That's the truth.

It might sound crazy now, I know. But the perception of shoe-company involvement in recruiting was so prevalent in recent years that I rarely heard a coach complain publicly or even privately about losing a so-called Nike kid to a so-called Nike school, or a so-called Under Armour kid to a so-called Under Armour school, or a so-called Adidas kid to a so-called Adidas school, even when the coach believed a shoe company had compensated a family in violation of NCAA rules. It was, more or less, for many, just considered part of the sport.

Again, Self's texts underline that point.

Why did he want Gassnola working for Kansas? Because, he believed, somebody at Nike was working for Duke and North Carolina. And why was Gassnola so anxious to help Kansas? Because, he believed, somebody at Nike was also helping Kentucky.

That's four blue-blood programs with Hall of Fame coaches.

"That's how [it] works," Self texted Gassnola.

Yep.

That's. How. It. Works.

[sdoyel]

That's how it works.

[TDub]

While this doesnt make me any more or less concerned directly. I would sure like the focus to shift to another school. Way to much Kansas name in the news lately. Would like another shoe (pardon the pun) in this get the public focus shifted away from KU.

[jfish26]

I do think there is a way in which the other shoe having not yet dropped (I really want to torture metaphors today, apparently) is beneficial: If it is the case (and you'd be an idiot to not believe) that the same thing was happening across shoe companies, then I would guess that the NCAA might not want to punish Adidas-related actions without knowing what the Nike-related actions actually are; what, are you going to just suggest that the last, say, forty years of college basketball simply didn't exist?

[pdub]

I think we deserve punishment from the NCAA.
As long as other schools get punished for skirting the rules.
But we are past that point...so either they put their foot down and hit most everyone or, what I think they do, ignore it and try to enforce/regulate more efficiently in the future.

[columbusdjkc]

How about the other side of it. From a long term financial picture does it benefit the NCAA to put down some of their largest money makers?

[jfish26]

How about the other side of it. From a long term financial picture does it benefit the NCAA to put down some of their largest money makers?

It does not.

[jfish26]

I think we deserve punishment from the NCAA.
As long as other schools get punished for skirting the rules.
But we are past that point...so either they put their foot down and hit most everyone or, what I think they do, ignore it and try to enforce/regulate more efficiently in the future.

Did you grow up Catholic? That's some solid, good-old-fashioned Catholic guilt there (trust me, I'd know).

Why in the world would we "deserve" punishment for breaking rules that (a) are immoral, unethical, arguably illegal to begin with, (b) are and have always been arbitrarily, haphazardly and unevenly enforced and (c) are being broken by everyone because everyone (including us) has been collectively fine with them being broken openly and brazenly and without consequence?

I understand that you and I disagree on (a), but even so.

[Deleted User 75]

Maybe Lavar Ball will host a tournament for all the schools that get post season bans!