Adidas federal court trial
 

Don't know how many are following this, but it started this week. There have already been some bombshells dropped. Some schools we knew were involved: Louisville, Kansas, Arizona, NCSt, Miami, So. Cal, Maryland & Auburn.

Teams that have come up in testimony.......Kentucky, Creighton, Texas, Bama, LSU, DePaul, Oregon, Ok St, Miss St, Wash, Utah. UNC's top recruit Nasir Little is also named, but no one has claimed he &/or his family were directly offered $. Rumors are it was an AAU coach. But it's not hard to imagine a scheme to have the cash trickle down.

What should scare basketball schools is that the Adidas execs on trial aren't denying anything. Their strategy is to say what they did isn't illegal but standard practice. The defense is they didn't violate governmental law. They violated NCAA laws. So whatever comes out of their mouths is material for the NCAA to come after the schools.

I think this article by Yahoo!Sports is spot on.

too big to fail

NCAA will not punish many of these schools as much as they would had it been a single mid major being caught

..

Yahoo has cried wolf about this for over a year now.

But that article did have some humor in it. $25,000 is nothing to Adidas or any other shoe company. Even if that athlete does not make it or goes with a different company it does not matter to them.
If they do that enough times and land with one then it makes all that 'investment' worth while.

Should Louisville get the death penalty?

Based on yesterday's testimony by Gassnola, it seems more likely to be Kansas and Bill Self.

Maybe you didn’t see today from this morning though.

The testimony has all been in line with the prosecution theory that Kansas is the one school that didn’t have any knowledge. Now, there is still a lot of trial to go, but you’re completely, and anyone who writes what you wrote, is completely missing the points made in court.

The testimony so far has been golden for Kansas.

Today's testimony seems to make Kansas look very bad. Not sure why you don't think so.

"But De Sousa wasn't the only Kansas player Gassnola was dealing with. Gassnola testified that he paid $90,000 in multiple cash and wire transfers to former Kansas player Billy Preston's mother and her partner. The first cash drop of $30,000 came in a New York hotel room and the second cash drop of $20,000 was in a Las Vegas hotel room, he said."

And this gem:

"Gassnola testified that Preston's mother said she was going to tell KU investigators that she was intimately involved with Gassnola, which would make the $90,000 payments "OK.""

Part of my reasoning is that tax evasion is the major crime here, and this is it big time.

And this from KUSports:

http://www2.kusports.com/news/2018/o...orruption-tri/

I will go with my law degree and three decades of experience. You go with what you are googling. He specifically testified that this was all without KU involvement.

Also, the defendants are losing. The United States doesn’t lose trials.

Kansas ain't getting the death penalty. Even though they have the Cards dead to rights, even L'ville ain't getting the death penalty.

Kansas will still take a hit if the testimony is true, because they played an ineligible player. It doesn't matter if Kansas knew or not. According to the way the NCAA sees things (not the law), playing an ineligible player, regardless of why, means those games are forfeited. And usually the tournament money is as well. Let's keep in mind that "the law" has little to do w/the way the NCAA operates. In fact, the NCAA in the past has arrogantly argued in court that no state has jurisdiction over its organization. Only when the NCAA overreaches its authority and goes beyond its stated & agreed upon methods of operation do the courts get involved.

If Gassnola's testimony is all that connects KU to this scandal, the Jayhawks program should be fine for the future. But I'm positive that the NCAA will find it interesting that Gassnola was brought into contact w/DeSousa by a KU assistant. I'm sure they will also want to explore why Gassnola would feel he let Self down in Ayton's recruitment, when Ayton chose another Adidas school in Arizona. Wasn't Gassnola employed by Adidas, not Kansas? If anything falls out from those revelations, then KU might get reason to worry.

What Cobra said, except that KU was I’ve been told cleared on the DeSouza matter cspecifically on this by the NCAA, in advance of him playing.

Conversely, Preston was not and never played a minute for Kansas and was set to be dismissed from the team when he left the school.

Of course, it is not beyond the NCAA to go back on its word no matter what they said...so we will see. I just don’t think there’s anything thus far that in any way impugns KU in the trial....but....the court would have jurisdiction as Cobra says if the NCAA disregards its own rules in dealing with member institutions. Ie, going back on what they told Kansas or another school. Let’s just say I doubt Bill is losing sleep.

But we are one year into a possible three years of trials....albeit this is the KU centered one.

I understand what and why you are saying.

I don't think we have heard everything yet, as you said.

Perhaps you could elaborate on what crimes were committed as I only see tax evasion.

That's the point the defense is making. That's the point the article I posted made. This isn't a governmental problem. This is a problem the NCAA created for itself. The only place where this stuff is illegal is within the confines of NCAA rulebook. The NCAA arrogantly seeks to control the actions of students before they ever step w/in their scope of oversight, and the actions of people connected to the students who never come under the NCAA's oversight.

Sure. Wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud are two big ones. 18 USC 1343, 1349, 2 Conspiracy to launder money is another. 18 USC 1956. This one is derivative of the wire fraud charges.

The wire fraud, for example, is in that the US alleges that the defendants, Gatto et al., defrauded the universities in that they made payments to the athletes, without knowledge of the universities, causing the provision of scholarships to the athletes by the school when in fact the defendants knew the athletes to be ineligible by virtue of the payments. In other words, the US specifically alleges, and as an element of the proof it requires, that the universities were victims of the fraud.

I think they've got these guys dead to rights on these statutes. But, again, there's a lot of trial to go.

Oh, also, I don't want to give the idea that there is no way on earth, in the real world, that I don't think people at KU had a good guess at what 'we are here to help" means. But in and of itself, I think this is the nature of the beast. These big schools have huge compliance departments, full of lawyers working 24/7, to make sure they are just right up to the line but not over or at least not egregiously over (as was Pitino).

So basically, as Denzel's character said in Training Day (I love that movie)...

"It's not what you know, it's what you can prove."

So I'm not saying that if you put a gun to his head, Self (or almost every other major coach of the big business of D1 college athletics) would say "no way I thought Adidas could be paying folks" but rather, he'd say "look, they said they were here to help. Other than that, I didn't ask and I can't control a private corporation's illicit actions."

Here you go. Who needs Ambien when you’ve got this to read....

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr...98751/download

The big news today are text message entered into evidence that the defense suggests shows Bill Self knew of payments to players. While I have no doubts there was prior knowledge by KU's staff, all the texts show is that Self knew there was triangular communication between the Jayhawks, Adidas & the players' camp.

Those texts are not helpful to the defense. seriously. They're not. They actually bolster the prosecution case.

"The great koach k is way too smart for this". Full disclosure, my fave team's coach (Roy WIlliams) is too smart as well to say he doesn't "know that world". They know they all have gotten into the dirt.