To understand that impulse you have to understand where my love of college sports comes from.
The first sports team I ever fell in love with was the University of Louisville men's basketball team. I remember DeJuan Wheat raining 3s and breaking school records. I remember Samaki Walker's triple double in a game against Kentucky that Louisville had no business winning. I remember Marques Maybin had the most incredible vertical leap of any man his size that I had ever seen.
But more than that, I remember being allowed to stay up past my bedtime to watch late tip-offs with my dad. I remember after my sister and mom had gone to bed sitting there on our couch in the den cheering on the Cards with my dad having to shush my youthful exuberance to keep me from waking up the whole house.
I remember putting a hole in the wall in my room when I threw a mini-pool table cue ball as hard as I could at my bedroom wall after a particularly lackluster effort and galling loss to Georgia Tech. And I remember my dad not punishing me nearly as severely as I deserved to be because he totally understood my frustration. I remember briefly considering becoming a Kentucky fan in the naivete of my youth as the team in blue was dominating my beloved Cards year after year in the early 90's as (ironically) Rick Pitino was hitting his stride at the school and Denny Crum's career had entered its twilight years.
But more than that, I remember spending Saturdays with my dad at the University of Louisville law school library. My dad, with the help of the G.I. bill, put himself through law school at night so that he could provide for me and my mom and my sister. He worked as a painter during the day. A job that basically amounted to the family business. He was the first and only person to go to college in his family at the time that he graduated and the only person to get an advanced degree until I followed in his footsteps.
And my dad has seen it all as a Louisville fan. The triumphant teams of the 80's. The Doctors of Dunk. He had been to the mountaintop of college basketball fandom twice. Once before I was born and once when I was too young to remember. So I always wondered why when I was a kid he took the losses so well. He never seemed as frustrated or as hungry as me as a fan. And now I realize that he had seen the best he thought he would ever see just before I really started following.
That's why it meant so much to me to stand there in the Georgia Dome as the clock hit all zeroes on Louisville's 2013 national championship win over Michigan in an improbable comeback with a team that was made up of players that weren't top 10 talents but they had Hall of Fame hearts. Jumping up and down, both of our voices hoarse, hugging and high-fiving. I finally got to experience that moment with my dad that was denied to me for so long. (And my mom was there, too, because she may have gone to bed before some Louisville games ended but she made it clear she was not missing this one.)
I will cherish that moment for as long as I live.
So that's why sitting here typing this just hours after it was announced that Tom Jurich and Rick Pitino had been "effectively fired" from the University of Louisville, of all the emotions running through me--anger, frustration, fear, denial--I mostly just feel sad.
Sad that I'll never get to watch another game with my dad without it being just a little bit tainted. Because Jurich and Pitino might be gone but as a Louisville fan, I can't forget what they built at that university. And I can't help but notice the tactics that were required to build it.
While many fans can live in the cognitive dissonance that is the fairy tale we tell ourselves about the fidelity and integrity of college sports, I now have had the scales ripped from my eyes. Everyone wants to believe that their school is the exception. "Our coach does it the right way." The truth is that it is very unlikely that Louisville is out there alone as a bad actor. In fact, we know for certain that isn't true because assistant coaches at Arizona, Oklahoma State, USC and Auburn have been all been charged with various crimes. So while the focus has turned immediately to Louisville it will soon shift back to those programs. (Sean Miller, come on down, you're the next contestant on everyone in America is calling for you to lose your job.)
And we know that James Gatto, Adidas' head of global sports marketing since 1993, is also in the crosshairs of the FBI. That puts every Adidas school in the country at risk as who knows how extensive this bribery scheme designed to boost the bottom line of Adidas really was?
Do we really think that Adidas was out here competing alone for the top recruits in the country with the willingness to pay players under the table and yet so consistently losing those players to Nike schools and AAU organizations? That doesn't pass the laugh test. There are too many former players out here saying that this type of activity amounts to the "business of college basketball" for that to be true. Including Jay Williams, formerly of Duke. No one is in a better position to know what happens in a high profile commitment involving the top schools in the country than Jay Williams.
Mark Schlabach's exhaustive breakdown on the FBI action this week paints a picture of a sport corrupt to its core. Just this short passage is enough to send a shiver up your spine.
During the meeting, Dawkins laid out plans to funnel money to the family of a second player, who was scheduled to graduate from high school in 2019. "The mom is like, 'We need our [expletive] money,'" Dawkins said. "So we got to be able to fund the situation ... We're all working together to get this kid to [Louisville]. Obviously, in turn, the kid will come back to us."
When Dawkins mentioned they'd have to be careful because the Cardinals were already on NCAA probation, the Louisville assistant agreed. "We gotta be very low-key," he said.
The men agreed to funnel the money through Augustine's program, and he promised them that "all my kids will be [Adidas] kids." The undercover agent then handed Augustine an envelope containing $12,700 in cash, according to the FBI, and Dawkins told him that it would cover payments to the second player's family for July and August.
Augustine told the group that he expected Adidas to cover the payments because "no one swings a bigger [expletive] than [an unidentified Louisville coach]" at Adidas, and all the coach had to do "is pick up the phone and call somebody [and say], 'These are my guys, they're taking care of us.'"
After the Louisville assistant left the hotel room, Dawkins and the others discussed the payment plan to the first recruit's family. He said that even though Adidas had agreed to pay him $100,000, a rival athletic apparel company was "coming with a higher number," and he needed to get more money from Adidas to secure the player's commitment to Louisville. Dawkins said he'd spoken to the second unnamed Louisville coach and told him, "I need you to call Jim Gatto, who's the head of everything" at Adidas' basketball program.
We now know that other schools could be involved. We now know that other shoe companies could be involved. We now know that AAU grassroots basketball programs could be involved.
We know UNC is not untouched as past misdeeds in the football program are connected to a shady business manager who was charged in the current case.
In 2015, Blazer was also linked to an investigation of improper cash payments to University of North Carolina football players. A grand jury indicted former Tar Heels player Christopher Hawkins for violating the state's sports agent law by giving money to a UNC player and illegally contacting another about signing a contract. During the investigation, former UNC linebacker Robert Quinn told state investigators that Hawkins gave Quinn money to steer him to Blazer and agent Peter Schaffer, according to court documents. Kendric Burney, the other former UNC player, told investigators that Hawkins arranged and attended Burney's meetings with Blazer and Schaffer.
We know that it's very possible that Pitino himself was the one ultimately calling the shots as the designated "coach 2" in the FBI documents. And you have to wonder if it's realistic to believe that he is the only major college coach with the combination of power and lack of scruples to be at the head of one of these schemes.
The scandal runs deep and wide. Its fallout is only just beginning. Many more shoes are likely to drop. But will anything change?⚡️ “The jig is up on "amateur athletics"”https://t.co/pGk9XhtcvE— Brent Woodcox (@BrentWoodcox) September 28, 2017
I agree with Jay Bilas that the biggest factor putting a barrier in front of true change and injecting honesty and integrity into college athletics is that same thing that is motivating coaches, players, agents and others to break the rules and the law: money.
As long as there is this much money to be made, it's a joke to call this amateur athletics. The very least we can do is remove the incentive for people to break the law. Pay the players. Take off a little bit of the pressure for these families who are caught up in an exploitative system and for the players who are just trying to get a fair wage for the labor they have put in on behalf of universities and shoe companies.
The only way things change is if we truly re-examine the purpose and principles behind college athletics as a whole. If money is the primary motivator for everyone involved, the system will always lead to weeks like this one. And a day of reckoning could be coming for every fan's favorite school.
As for me, I'm just not sure how much longer I can look the other way.
