The FBI continues to build a case against a lot of major names in college basketball, who are connected with getting payments from agents and apparel companies. The latest report from Yahoo Sports gave details to the information was gathered from the FBI’s raid of ASM, an agency that had many NBA clients. Over 20 schools were listed in the report.
Assistant coaches have already been arrested for their alleged participation in this, but now Tom Izzo and “Villanova Coaches” were found on this report. It has since been removed from the report. If coaches are connected to the agency in any way, there will likely be heavy sanctions on those programs and the coaches will likely be fired.
Not only were former players named, but current players like Miles Bridges, Kevin Knox, Wendell Carter and Collin Sexton, were all mentioned in the report to varying degrees of receiving money. Some were given loans and payments, while others just met with the agency for dinner. With the former players, wins will likely be vacated, as well as other additional sanctions. The current players may be ruled ineligible if and when the NCAA gets all the details.
The likely situation for all current players is that they will play out the season and be off to the NBA before anything happens. While the NCAA would love to have all the information, this is an FBI investigation that could take years to sort out. The FBI has no obligation to give any documents to the NCAA or help in the NCAA’s process of finding information.
Only Xavier has responded to this report so far. Edmond Sumner was a sophomore point guard on the team last year and was listed as having received $7,000 from the agency.
“I have no relationship with Andy Miller or any of his associates. He plays no role in the recruitment of potential student-athletes on Xavier’s behalf. Beyond that, our staff has never created a path for him to foster a relationship with any of our student-athletes while enrolled at Xavier. Any suggestion that I or anyone on my staff utilized Andy Miller to provide even the slightest of financial benefits to a Xavier student-athlete is grossly misinformed. We are prepared to cooperate with any and all investigations at any level.”
The NCAA has since responded with a statement from President Mark Emmert.
“These allegations, if true, point to systematic failures that must be fixed and fixed now if we want college sports in America. Simply put, people who engage in this kind of behavior have no place in college sports. They are an affront to all those who play by the rules. Following the Southern District of New York’s indictments last year, the NCAA Board of Governors and I formed the independent Commission on College Basketball, chaired by Condoleezza Rice, to provide recommendations on how to clean up the sport. With these latest allegations, it’s clear this work is more important now than ever. The Board and I are completely committed to making transformational changes to the game and ensuring all involved in college basketball do so with integrity. We also will continue to cooperate with the efforts of federal prosecutors to identify and punish the unscrupulous parties seeking to exploit the system through criminal acts.”
What’s next?
Don’t worry about the rest of this season through March Madness. That will go on as scheduled, as there is no way the NCAA gets all of the information needed to punish teams yet. It may be vacated later, but just enjoy watching good basketball. If they don’t get the information from the FBI, then they will likely make overall changes to their current procedures and rules to make these things easier to catch, as well as start to investigate on their own.
It’s a long process for these FBI investigations. The public having this information already is going to create some impatience. The FBI is going to turn over every leaf and hopefully get some confessions. They will likely want to find out how many coaches were involved with the agency actively. Izzo and Villanova coaches are likely going to be fired at some point if this report rings true, since they had direct communication with this agency.
Fans of college basketball who want to know everything now will have to wait. Keep an eye on Yahoo Sports, as they have been the only site to be granted access to these documents. Any further information will likely come from them.
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