Could Self Sign More Top Talent, If Self Hired William Wesley as His Personal Agent, as Calipari Reputedly Has?
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Or would it help for Self to hire the personal agents of Coach K, or Roy?
Do board rats think it appears (note: I am only asking about appearances) that agents have any influence on where Top 100 recruits, especially the OADs, sign to play in D1?
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I’m surprised Cal is still able to recruit as well as he does. He’s only won one title with all that talent. And UK is usually an embarrassment with their final loss. He also talks down to his players, treating them like they are 5 yrs old.
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Yep, slayr, in a freer recruiting market I believe the negative recruiting feed back he would be receiving would be even more pointed.
Frankly, I wonder if World Wide might be partial to taking on a new client with Larry out, and Cal plateaued.
I know, I know, we have it really good right now.
I need to zip it and let Self keep working the problem.
But Wes does have quite the rep for being able to deliver highly ranked players.
Can’t blame a Jayhawk for dreaming a little.
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@jaybate-1.0 http://nypost.com/2016/06/19/inside-the-shadiness-of-the-nba-draft/
My answer would be yes, it appears agents have a pretty strong influence. Who was negotiating for Wiggins reported Adidas contract BEFORE he was on KU’s campus? Pretty sure he isn’t negotiating for himself…
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Outta da park!
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@jaybate-1-0 The more I read, the more I’m starting to see that everyone is cheating. If you are a player ranked in the top 50 you are getting paid by someone.
And Nike making $300M in revenue just from LeBron’s shoes, makes me realize why they put so much money and effort into it. To me though, it is actually more of a trickle down effect. Shoe Co. pays Shoe Rep. (WWWes) Shoe Rep pays Agent. Agent pays player. Shoe Co. needs at least 2 degrees of separation for deniability. WWWes found a loophole to bypass the agent. Goes directly to players. Makes him 25 times as valuable as any other agent or shoe rep. He gets to deliver the money pitches directly to the players from Shoe Co.
All I know, the more I dig, the more I believe Calipari has been gifted some amazing athletes. It might not be techinically cheating, but it is as close to being cheating as it could be. I’ve made it through his Memphis years. I’m about to start looking into UMass. Can’t imagine that Marcus Camby landing there was an accident… Not with UConn on him. His home state. Of whom he was a fan of. And said he wanted to play in state. I don’t care what momentum you have, an A10 school shouldn’t be landing top 10 recruits out of state.
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@jaybate-1-0 I’m starting to hypothesize that this almost Mafia-like behind the scenes recruiting was created because of the institution of the OAD rule.
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It was not illegal for John D. Rockefeller, operating in part reputedly with debt financing from Rothschild-agent-in-USA Morgan, to bring overwhelming financial resources to bear on oil refiners and producers to build an oil trust, because there was no anti-trust law making it illegal. Some of the strong arming used at times was, but bringing suit against strong arming did not break up the Trust.
Further, the Trust was not broken up until John D. appeared to want anti-trust law to protect him and the Standard from being cleared from the wake of the Rothschild’s move to build a greater global trust with Shell, a BP antecedent, and several others working to deny the Standard both global oil supplies and global refining control. In short, once Rockefeller built the Trust dominating North American oil refining directly and NA oil production indirectly, he actually appeared to enable anti trust law to be written to permit him to reorganize his trust in an oligopoly regime that could hold down domestic start ups and be used to break up foreign trusts that tried to operate in USA. Doing this was NOT illegal.
Market regimes set up in realms where such is not prohibited are legal, whether fair or not.
I strongly doubt what has been broadly done in basketball would qualify as illegaland that law exists that could be used to break up the regime ordering basketball now, unless TPTB want that.
There maybe some narrow, even egregious violations, but enforcing them seems unlikely to bring down the broad regime.
Thus, I talk about asymmetries in regime effects, rather than illegalities.
It is all a very sticky wicket IMHO.
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I reread my post and I don’t mean to discourage you. I’m just tying to steer you away from the illegality and mafia ice bergs of characterizations. Those are judgements fans need not make. Those judgements are up to authorities.
I believe you are on the right track to hypothesizing the dynamics that appear to underpin the product we see on TV. There appears to be a regime with a number of parts imposing some asymmetries in cost and benefit and the regime appears rather poorly understood by fans and under-reported on by MSM. Coaches also seem prone not to explain how it works in much detail. And books from 20 years ago describe many dynamics that seem no longer to be discussed, even though there seems little reason to infer they have gone away.
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If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying. Not every top recruit is influenced and some do legitimately go places for reasons other than what logo is on the shoes, there’s absolutely shadiness going on with everyone, including KU and Self.
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Texas Hawk 10 said:
… there’s absolutely shadiness going on with everyone, including KU and Self.
If you are right, it appears Self and staff are either among the most ineffectual shady types in D1, or they aren’t shady.
Why do I say this?
Walt Whitman.
Naadir Tharpe.
Landen Lucas.
Hunter Michelson.
Jamari Traylor.
Dwight Coleby
Mitchell Lightfoot
Justin Wesley
Merv Lindsey
Anrio Adams
Cliff Alexander
Cheick Diallo
Carlton Bragg
Note: these are just since 2010.
Are you telling us all that Self has been shady to get this list of players?
What is the point of being shady, if the above is what you have to try to compete with against Duke, UNC and UK?
KU is in a lot worse trouble with recruiting than even I think it is, if they have had to be shady to get the players above.
I always thought there would be more pay off to being shady than the above players.
I thought being shady got you dump trucks like those apparently backing up to Duke, UNC, and UK.
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jaybate 1.0 said:
Frankly, I wonder if World Wide might be partial to taking on a new client with Larry out, and Cal plateaued.
Nah… WWW can stay in his own slimy world. We’ve made monster sacrifices and have put in meticulous planning to bring our program to that final pinnacle at the top. The last thing we need is the pollution from someone like WWW.
Look how Gilbert tarnished the reputation of Wooden. Many won’t even give credit to Wooden for anything because of Gilbert.
We’ll pass on WWW!
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It was a weak moment. Thanks for reminding me we need to do it our way at KU.
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@jaybate-1.0 There’s different degrees of shadiness.
Brandon Rush Sherron Collins Darrell Arthur Xavier Henry Josh Selby Andrew Wiggins Cliff Alexander Kelly Oubre Josh Jackson KU may not have the volume of players that UK and Duke, but to think there has been no shadiness whatsoever with any of these guys is something I would have a hard time believing.
To me, it’s just more about not being blatantly obvious that you’re cheating that gets schools in trouble lile the fake classes at UNC or agents paying players and other stupid crap like that. Create enough deniability on your end and the NCAA is never going to catch you because of the legal powers they lack as we all saw with the Cliff case.
We all know that Cliff should’ve been ruled ineligible from the day his mom signed those loan papers, but someone was smart enough to make sure that specific document never reached the NCAA. And since the NCAA can’t subpoena anything, Self and KU gets off clean by playing ball with the NCAA and sitting Cliff in a year where KU wasn’t making a deep run to begin with.
I would just about guarantee that Self, along with any other high profile coach (regardless of sport) in the NCAA could be busted for some kind of major rules infractions. But as long as you play ball with the NCAA in the little stuff that might occasionally cost a team a scholarship or two and self report tge small stuff, the NCAA won’t go after you for the big stuff.
Self just knows how to play the game so he doesn’t get in much trouble.
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I don’t think you are too far off in your pessimistic (but probably realistic) view of college ball.
But I don’t think it is fair to lump coaches into a generalization on ethics.
I’m not going to pretend like Bill is some kind of saint, but the ethics differences between coaches is definitely huge.
One of my basketball player buddies who is 25 years younger than me knows quite a bit about it. He was a solid D1 recruit and he doesn’t speak much different from the way your post read.
His overall perspective:
- D1 recruiting is slimy
- However… there are plenty of decent coaches who play pretty “straight up” ball.
I don’t think what he told me shocks anyone. He refuses to put names to his stories… but he has told me some whoppers. The stories either involved him or some of the players he played with. Some of those stories even shocked me!
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@Texas-Hawk-10 I’m not sure you can label Coach Self as any type of shady. Does he know the rules? yes. Is he extremely intelligent and knowledgeable about the game and coaching as a whole? Yep. Would he have the intelligence to see loopholes in the rules and be able to operate in between those spaces without getting dinged for something major? Yah, probly. But maybe his success is due to him being extremely good at what he does and Omg, honest about how he operates his system at KU?
If he was willing to operate under the table and get the best of the best recruits, don’t you think he might have landed more of them in his tenure at KU? I mean compared to UK and Duke and now UCLA and other schools shockingly landing big time top 10 recruits at a Washington or an LSU or even gasp MU!?!? Really!? I mean MU has a higher ranked class coming in than KU does right now. Let that sink in. MU. And, Coach Self is shady? And, he just got named the president of the NABC where he has been working on their various boards for years.
No, I’m not buying the shady label for Coach Self. @jaybate-1-0 I purposely left off UNC of my list of schools on this post to segue into a response for you as well. I don’t believe you can put UNC on that list any more. I’m specifically referring to the fact that Roy typically gets less OAD and TAD talent than KU does…at least since what, 5 - 6 years ago? They haven’t had a OAD go in the first round in a decade. How many OADs has KU had get picked in the first round in that same time frame? lots. So yah the whole fake class gate fiasco is disheartening. Roy probly knew about it but was able to maintain plausible deniability. But, Roy hasn’t been able to out recruit KU for quite some time now.
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@drgnslayr Id like to hear some of those stories on here if you can redact some of the more personal info out of them
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@Lulufulu Of course Self is a good coach. That’s why he wins games unlike someone like Frank Haith who was blatantly buying players at Miami and still couldn’t win games there with his bought players.
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Perfect example. 2017 Missouri Recruiting class.
They signed Porter’s dad, hmmm Michael and Jontay follow.
Martin drops by Jeremiah Tilmon’s High School not even a week after getting the job, just so happens his sister is a principle at Tilmon’s school. Tilmon is still technically signed to Illinois. Days later he asks out of his LOI…hmmm
Not to toot the KU horn but we got Mario Chalmers by bringing in his father… Wasn’t Danny Manning a similar situation? Things happen inside and outside the rules every day…
I would like to think Self is more “straight ball” then “side-pocket johnny”. We tend to hear from recruits that Self’s pitch is straight forward and doesn’t give these kids a candy bar and sell them the world like some other big time coaches tend to.
I think nowadays every big Power 5 team and even the elites have to live in this “competitive advantage” battle. More and more reports are coming about about shoe handlers and shoe runners telling kids which schools to go to and which to consider. Too many hands in the pot and nothing the NCAA can do about it unless they find out
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@drgnslayr I have a friend that is a couple of years older than me that was getting D1 looks back in his playing days. He says a lot goes on behind closed doors, escorts, cars and money. He ended up going to a junior college because he didn’t have the grades and said they gave him a car to come but it was basically done bye a booster’s friends friend type deal with no paper trail. I think Self stays within the rules most of the time but you know some of these guys getting paid. Its like the movie blue chips, if you ain’t paying these days you ain’t getting the top guys.
