FBI
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Kcmatt7 said:
If the NCAA would just let them fetch endorsements in the open instead of creating rules that caused this black market for recruiting to take place, we wouldn’t have an issue. People want to pay the players, let them get paid. It would cost the school, literally, nothing.
Agree.
Also that the rules apply to only athletes is part of what makes it so stupid. There is nothing stopping a music major from performing a concert and making money off that.
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A few salient points to consider.
First, KU is listed as a victim which at first sight would indicate lack of culpability or perhaps it is the FBI’s way if saying we will call KU a victim until we can prove someone in the programs was involved.
Second, the indictment mentions that KU has additional steps in place to insure accountability by parents and/or guardians which go beyond what the NCAA requires.
Third, KU chose not to play Preston even when he was at the time officially cleared by the NCAA which would indicate an abundance of caution.
Fourth, Silvio and/or guardian were not paid to come to KU. Apparently Under Armour paid his guardian to go to Maryland and the Adidas money was used to repay Under Armour so he could go to KU which is whe he wanted to go in the first place and for no pay.
All the above show lack of intent or knowledge by KU despite the steps in place to ensure compliance which bides well for KU, particularly if no one in the program is proven to be involved. Now, if someone connected to the program was involved or aware it changes everything.
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Billy Prestons mom only had to wait months!
go to the G league, overseas, get a job, don’t ruin our program for 
. Do the the Mitchell Robinson route. Seems to me billy was enjoying his time at KU, I blame his moms. Go ride the bus in the g league and eat sack lunches and play in little gyms w/ zero fans. Do it! Does KU have any legal recourse on the people that sign those papers illegally? I’d be surprised if Silvio knew anything about that exchange. Jmo
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Hmmm … how about if a recruit takes $50,000 from UA to go to Maryland. Tells them to stick it. Goes to KU. Keeps the money. What is UA going to do about it? Maybe that’s where Guido comes in.
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Bills response last night. Nothing big other than he doesn’t think himself or a coach will be named.
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Yeah I really don’t see how Silvio knew about it, because it sure reads like he put a wrench in the plan by wanting to go to Kansas.
No idea on Billy, but we all pretty much read the bad vibes coming from his mom from the jump.
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REHawk said:
Heck, KU might even be a Nike school in the not too distant future. Or perhaps the University will go with Red Wing!
I think it’s high time Zips makes a play for the college athletic market. Or maybe Kangaroos.
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Kcmatt7 said:
If the NCAA would just let them fetch endorsements in the open instead of creating rules that caused this black market for recruiting to take place, we wouldn’t have an issue. People want to pay the players, let them get paid. It would cost the school, literally, nothing.
Even if the NCAA allowed it how do you resolve the kid wearing NIKE at an Adidas school with Adidas jerseys? Not against it but it would be interesting.
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Oh and BTW I’m only 44 not 80… LOL
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Sorry for getting a little chippy earlier btw.
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@BigBad The structure of shoe deals with the universities would have to change.
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@Kcmatt7 Don’t fool yourself. I think that this is a common mistake. We think if we give a mouse a piece of cheese each day, he’ll be good. He won’t raid our pantry. Then we give him two pieces of cheese, that will suffice. The fact is the pursuit of money is never ending. Folks will lie, cheat, steal, and demand more money, no matter how much they get. Athletes feel aggrieved in the NFL signing a one year franchise tag of $18 million, guaranteed – money that, alone, sets them for life.
So if you think that if we’d, “just let them fetch endorsements in the open instead of creating rules that caused this black market for recruiting to take place, we wouldn’t have an issue”, I think you are sadly mistaken. This is just not the way of the world. And I use the word “sadly” because it is a bit sad.
People always want more, and there will always be voices demanding more. And in their minds, they will always justify the rule breaking because “they deserve it.”
Doing anything more for the players is not a panacea, it is a curse.
The only cure here is competition. This will allow the NCAA to find a tighter niche. It would be much better if there was a league with real pay, as a better option.
I guess my frustration is that folks want to change NCAA rules to fit their agenda. The college game, as is, is more attractive than the alternatives. That escapes most. That’s why they play NCAA ball. An inescapable free market fact.
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@BigBad They do it now in the NBA. The jerseys are Nike but shoes don’t matter. I think it would be an easy restructure honestly. It would end up evening out. Nike would pay some Adidas kids and Adidas would pay some Nike kids and before you knew it, you wouldn’t even think about what shoes kids were wearing.
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Any Chance the NCAA would throw KU’s shoe deal at them as reason to hold them accountable for this?
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@HighEliteMajor They are getting money for those endorsements one way or another and it is ignorant to think otherwise. Right now, it is just behind closed doors, and the NCAA is obviously accepting of it or else Kevin Knox, Miles Bridges, Collin Sexton, etc. wouldn’t have finished the season. It only makes sense to change the rules, if nobody is following them anyways.
It is more like the reason that they just upped the speed limit on Hwy 71. Nobody was following the speed limit anyways, so it was more dangerous for those traveling on it at the speed limit.
This was happening already. Because this was happening already, we now have people potentially going to prison for a crime that most would consider victimless.
Plain and simple, it is no longer a rule if nobody abides by it and you don’t enforce it.
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@HighEliteMajor Again, you want players to stay here for 4 years, yet you don’t want to offer them any reason to pick college over the pros.
It is a contradicting idea. You literally can’t have it both ways.
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Anyone who thinks playing players for their services probably will end corruption in NCAA sports probably doesn’t understand human nature very well. The shoe dudes, agents, boosters, random overzealous fans are still going to want to be influencers in where whomever goes to college.
We’ll find out that some kids are getting paid more than other kids, some schools will figure out how to pay more than other schools and athletes will still have to make decisions to walk with integrity.
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@Crimsonorblue22 I would prefer she go find a one-way ticket for a long bus ride in Dumbshitistan, or wherever he played his 2 games overseas.
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@JayHawkFanToo Your 4th item simplifies to “addidas money was used to allow him to go to KU”, doesn’t it? That still means it was an inducement.
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@BigBad Well, maybe they would have to stop letting the schools get paid for making kids wear (read: endorse) products they don’t want to use. Are you okay that currently the school gets paid literally millions to endorse a product while the person whose name and image are publicicized with that product gets nothing he wouldn’t get anyway?
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@mayjay how much did he get for that plus his share of, did his mom cut him in or not?
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@Crimsonorblue22 Ay, there’s the rub.
I always wonder how the teammates feel when players get caught and vacating wins is a sanction, voiding all their hard work. I would be really po’ed if I were clean and some selfish SOB cost me my ability to point to my career with pride.
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mayjay said:
@JayHawkFanToo Your 4th item simplifies to “addidas money was used to allow him to go to KU”, doesn’t it? That still means it was an inducement.
Not quite. Apparently Silvio wanted to go to KU in the first place for no pay but his guardian had other plans. Silvio could have gone to KU anyway and his guardian would have been in trouble with the Under Armour “collectors,” so Silvio personally had no say in the Under Armor decision and did not get paid by Adidas.
Moving forward, schools need to be extra careful with all these “guardians of African player since it appears they do it for the money and not necessarily from the goodness of their mercenary hearts.
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@JayHawkFanToo Do you think the enforcers would have targeted the guardian only? Interesting twist. But bottom line, “I didn’t know my guardian took a second batch of money from addidas to pay back the first from someone else so I could go to addidas school KU” is not very convincing against a presumption of ineligibility.
I could be wrong, of course, but I see a lot more wishful thinking going on here today than compelling arguments.
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@wissox Anyone who thinks NOT paying players for their services is still a good idea doesn’t understand human nature very well.
Even if it continues to be “illegal,” it will still happen because it has happened since sports were invented and the NCAA was established. So instead of being a stubborn old fool, the NCAA should find a better way to regulate these payments out in the open so that men never have to go to jail over something this stupid ever again.
If something is happening when it is illegal and still accepted by society, it is NEVER going to stop. Once you accept that, then you can solve the problem and begin to regulate what is happening instead. That is what I understand about human nature. Apparently you do not.
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Playing players is a huge mountain of an issue. We view it from the comfy couch of a blue blood. But take a school like Southern University of the SWAC where we used to live in Baton Rouge. Watch the highlights and see 500 people in the stands. Drive around the crumbling decaying campus and it’s hard to imagine them coming up with the money to pay players. And I would guess that the majority of DI schools play in front of nearly empty arenas too, meaning they have to find a way to pay players.
Where does it end? Do we pay rowers too? Gymnasts? Swimmers? Soccer players? They put in vast amounts of time for practice, travel and whatever else goes with it. If the football player down the hall in their dorm is getting pay for play, they would feel entitled to it as well.
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Kcmatt7 said:
@wissox Anyone who thinks NOT paying players for their services is still a good idea doesn’t understand human nature very well.
There are other options for that. Why must the NCAA change their model? 99% of NCAA basketball players are worth ZERO in a free market of professional basketball players.
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wissox said:
Where does it end? Do we pay rowers too? Gymnasts? Swimmers? Soccer players? They put in vast amounts of time for practice, travel and whatever else goes with it. If the football player down the hall in their dorm is getting pay for play, they would feel entitled to it as well.
How would Title IX play into this? Oh you are paying basketball players? Well you have to pay the female golfers the same amount…LOL
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BucknellJayhawk3 said:
“I wasn’t able to read all 140 posts.”
You weren’t ABLE - or more likely, you weren’t committed to it. Why don’t you tell the truth once in a while? I’ll tell you why:
YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!
Sorry, all in jest - saw the “Bucknell” thing and had flashbacks. Deep breath. All better now.
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@wissox THE SCHOOLS DO NOT PAY THE PLAYERS. THE PLAYERS FETCH ENDORSEMENTS ON AN OPEN MARKET.
If a rower can get someone to pay them for rowing, by God, let them get paid.
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@BigBad I firmly believe that the schools are paying the players plenty in free education and infrastructure. And that is fair across the board for all sports and athletes in college.
But the top recruits could easily be fetching $100k+ from endorsements every year while in school. How do I know this? Because they are literally getting that right now even while it is against the rules. Allowing them to get endorsements based on an open market takes title IX right out of the window. It isn’t gender based, it is what the market is willing to pay for a player.
Stifling those players abilities to earn has created a strange legal issue that could be fixed if we just let players fetch endorsements. Again, the school would not pay one single penny more. The open and free market would dictate what players got paid and what players didn’t. It’s that simple.
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I live in Ohio. I know maybe 3 people who could name a player on Kansas team this year before the final four. I cant believe the money that is out there for them. Crazy
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mayjay said:
@BigBad Well, maybe they would have to stop letting the schools get paid for making kids wear (read: endorse) products they don’t want to use. Are you okay that currently the school gets paid literally millions to endorse a product while the person whose name and image are publicicized with that product gets nothing he wouldn’t get anyway?
Not quite. I don’t believe anyone thinks that players wearing a certain brand of sports gear constitutes an endorsement; they wear it because that is the uniform the school provides to them. Even the schools don’t really “endorse” the product, they provide mostly exposure.
Now, student athletes know exactly what they will or will not get or be allowed to do or not do when they agree to play for a program and in return they get a full ride, luxurious accommodations, meals specially prepared for them by sports dietitians, the best coaches and trainers, state of the art facilities, a monthly stipend and national exposure. Seems like a pretty good deal to me and this is why every up and coming player aspires to play for a program like KU.
The option is to play in the G League or overseas for a low salary, sharing an apartment with a couple of other players, taking bus rides to the next game and playing before a couple of hundred fans. They can endorse anything they want from shoes to dog food. Nobody forces them to go to college, obviously they do it because they believe is the best deal for them.
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JayHawkFanToo said:
Nobody forces them to go to college, obviously they do it because they believe is the best deal for them.
There is a trend nowadays to constantly show how EVERYONE is somehow a victim and being exploited.
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mayjay said:
@JayHawkFanToo Do you think the enforcers would have targeted the guardian only? Interesting twist. But bottom line, “I didn’t know my guardian took a second batch of money from addidas to pay back the first from someone else so I could go to addidas school KU” is not very convincing against a presumption of ineligibility.
I could be wrong, of course, but I see a lot more wishful thinking going on here today than compelling arguments.
It really sounds like Silvio did not know of the Under Armour deal and when he decided to come to KU it threw a monkey wrench on the guardian’s plans. I believe the Cam Newton defense would apply in this case.
BTW, non enforcer would mess with the athlete, particularly since he apparently was not even part of the deal. The last thing they need is publicity.
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@JayHawkFanToo maybe on the guardian. Could have pocketed the cash.
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It is possible the guardian conned both Under Armour and Adidas.
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@JayHawkFanToo I don’t see how a case (that involves a kid who went to a different school than the one who paid his dad) provides a defense in a case like this (where the money paid to the guardian was paid by a company with the specific intent to steer him where he actually went).
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Like I said, if the kid was not involved and he ended up going to a school other than that negotiated by the guardian, then the Cam Newton defense kicks in.
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@Kcmatt7 I appreciate your passion. I am not tied to players staying four years. I don’t like OADs.
But here’s what’s important. I want players that want to play in college. I am all for competition.
Further, I don’t think you have to pay players to entice them to come. If you do, then they should choose something else if they want to get paid.
The concern I see above with universities getting paid for their players is off base. What company or entity does not make money off those that perform services for them? It’s a red-herring.
Further, if the value of a college player’s services is what the market will bear, right? Where is the market? It certainly isn’t restricted.
See, what you and others want is for a private organization to change its rules to accommodate the desires of a few. Instead of competing, folks want to change an entities rules and make them something they aren’t. See, the NCAA works great for most every athlete.
The market is there and open to be exploited. Start a league. Pay the players. Let them get endorsements. But if it was there, wouldn’t someone have done it by now?
Ah, but that’s the tricky part isn’t it – the players derive most all of their value from the stage that the NCAA provides. That’s right, the universities have the facilities, the tourney, the TV contract, the national exposure, the marketing, the brands, right? Without it, there’s nothing.
Thus is why the players just don’t sign with UA, or Nike, or Adidas out of high school, or go sign autographs, or whatever, and skip college.
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Exactly.
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@JayHawkFanToo for some reason I don’t think he did.
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Hell yeah, Silvio plays. This is pure bull crap. Its a damn conspiracy. Its ridiculous. I havent heard as much as a peep from the NCAA on these other issues. The NCAA says these are merely FBI investigations and they wont act.
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What happened to Zona? Nothing from the NCAA. This is more about the shoe companies, not the players. NCAA will not touch schools or players.
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Any school who recruits the top end guys will be tainted at some point.
Cal and UK are Trump and any slip up is front news and repeated over and over. K and Duke are Obama and any slip up gets buried. Go look at the Marvin Bagley situation.
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Too much to backread in this topic with how this board loads. That’s really my only complaint with this forum software.
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“Your first reaction is being upset. You work hard for something. You sacrifice so much. I know Silvio’s family, where she (De Sousa’s mom) lives. If you saw where she lived right now (Angola), that article would really make you upset because he is going through what he is going through to pursue his dreams and take care of his family, take care of his mom. He is doing it the right way. For people to take that away from him and away from me, it is crazy.” Of KU, Falmagne said: “Coach Self is not about that (paying players). That is one of the things I really appreciate about him. He is, like ‘Coaches are gonna offer you this. What I’m going to say is I am not going to jeopardize my livelihood for that. I can guarantee you if he really wants to be an NBA player, I can make him NBA. It’s going to take a lot of work from him, but I can get him there. That’s when his reward is going to come. Right now is not the time for it.’ I was like, ‘Wow, Coach Brown was right about this guy.’ That’s when we went over there (to visit KU).’’’
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I recall Preston’s mom reacting to certain things with a good dose of indignation as well, but I could be wrong …
So did he take the UA money as alleged? I wonder if money was sent to Angola? I speculate on wire transfers. Prosecutors love those.
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@BShark Wow, hard work and time put in equal success? That’s a hard sell these days.
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HighEliteMajor said:
@Kcmatt7 I appreciate your passion. I am not tied to players staying four years. I don’t like OADs.
But here’s what’s important. I want players that want to play in college. I am all for competition.
Further, I don’t think you have to pay players to entice them to come. If you do, then they should choose something else if they want to get paid.
The concern I see above with universities getting paid for their players is off base. What company or entity does not make money off those that perform services for them? It’s a red-herring.
Further, if the value of a college player’s services is what the market will bear, right? Where is the market? It certainly isn’t restricted.
See, what you and others want is for a private organization to change its rules to accommodate the desires of a few. Instead of competing, folks want to change an entities rules and make them something they aren’t. See, the NCAA works great for most every athlete.
The market is there and open to be exploited. Start a league. Pay the players. Let them get endorsements. But if it was there, wouldn’t someone have done it by now?
Ah, but that’s the tricky part isn’t it – the players derive most all of their value from the stage that the NCAA provides. That’s right, the universities have the facilities, the tourney, the TV contract, the national exposure, the marketing, the brands, right? Without it, there’s nothing.
Thus is why the players just don’t sign with UA, or Nike, or Adidas out of high school, or go sign autographs, or whatever, and skip college.
But you are ignoring the fact that they ARE getting paid with endorsements right this second. Ignoring that Nike and Adidas are never going to stop finding ways to pay players to attend certain schools or involve themselves in basketball. I do not think the NCAA should pay players. Or the Universities should pay players. I just do not think that they should restrict players earnings.
Why do you think they should restrict players earnings? How would that change the already screwed up landscape of College Basketball and College Basketball recruiting? How would it change KU basketball? What would it do?
Why continue the song and dance? Instead of players taking dirty money and the NCAA looking the other way full well knowing it is happening, why not just accept it and regulate it.
Your argument is, “its free market,” and that is it and if the players don’t like it, go somewhere else. I mean you are basically just opposing something just to oppose it if you can’t tell me simply, why you think the NCAA should not let players fetch endorsements when it would cost the NCAA and its member schools absolutely nothing or, more likely, it would save everyone millions from the reduced compliance and investigating that would need to take place.
These rules were made to only apply to the small number of athletes in the first place. So saying a rule works for the large majority of athletes when it wasn’t created for them in the first place is not actually digging into the problem.
You are basically saying “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” Except it is broke, and now you are really saying “well it still kind of works and we don’t really want to fix it, so just leave it how it is.” What happens something comes around that actually does work, effectively ends CBB, and all we had to do was change a simple rule that was created for and only effected a small number of athletes? I love CBB and don’t want to see it go away. But not being proactive about these types of things is exactly how you see large companies go out of business all the time.
