FBI...here we go
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I think a lot of people actually would not really care much about or be invested in KU basketball if it was clean. Going back to Larry Brown all the winning is what built up the fan base. If the team was a perennial loser it would basically be like football, which would suck.
Jmo.
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@BShark largely I think you’re probably correct, and I also think that sad and unfortunate
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I admit. I still just do not understand the Preston thing if we’re a dirty program…
I mean there is the argument that paper trail was more blatant. Until this recent evidence about desouza, and what could have been potentially with Williamson and or Ayton. That kinda blows that argument doesn’t it?
Beyond that, what is the difference here? Dollar amount? Does that change the fact that it’s a blatant rules violation In the current system?
Why play desouza and keep Billy out? Or also. Why not play Billy too of we’re dirty and we know it and the NCAA doesn’t really care as long as it gets it’s bank?
It makes me think there’s just so much more to all of this than we will ever know.
Maybe I just refuse to see it all for what it is. I just want a smoking gun the other direction. I wanna be able to say Dammit, see… Bill does it right and largely overchieves at it in spite of that
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@cragarhawk Nobody in this business has overachieved to the level of success of a Wooden or a Self or a Knight without some “help.”
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UK fans hoping and praying.
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@Kcmatt7 let’s say that is the truth
It taints the game doesn’t it? The game, the history of it and everything included.
Who do you personally hold in higher regard… Roger Maris? Or Bonds, Sosa, and Mcquire?
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Knight never cheated. That guy hated Wooden because he knew about Sam Gilbert.
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@BigBad And 48 hours ago apparently half of our fanbase thought Bill Self was a saint.
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Go read about Knight. The guy barely recruited. He had to be begged by assistants to go look at guys. LOL.
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Yeah if there is a guy I’d believe was clean, it’s Knight.
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Also I knew Jason Collier personally(he went to school with my younger sister). He said Knight mentioned others will offer you things I wont.
Side note. I tried to convince Jason to go to Kansas. Told him he would be the next Lafrentz. 7’ lefty.
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@cragarhawk Absolutely taints the game. The game has been tainted since the 50s. But it is the system we place upon it that doesn’t work, not those inside of it. There is so much money in the game and we expect those generating the product to not want to take a bite of the apple. You guys say it is about integrity, but the ones without integrity are the ones who ignore the rules in the first place. The NCAA. You can only expect as much integrity out of the system as you put into the system. The NCAA has no desire to stop the payments, so they don’t.
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I’d like to say I absolutely believe Coach Knight was
clean. Would definitely have before…In light of recent events I’m skeptical about everyone for the last 50 to 60 years I guess…
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@BigBad An arrogant asshole who verbally (and probably physically) abused players and doesn’t recruit but was amazingly successful for 35 years. Sounds totally legit.
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He got more out of them cause they were scared of being choked the eff out!!! Lol
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I didnt say the guy was a saint. I said he didnt pay players.
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@BigBad I’m not saying he did. I’m just not saying someone else around the program didn’t.
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Also recruiting was waaaay different back then. You could still find kids in the 80s. Shoecos in the 90s changed things and with the internet now almost all prospects are known.
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@BShark kinda adds up. That’s when Knight’s teams really began to fall off badly
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Knight didnt need to cheat. Most kids in Indiana looked at Basketball as religion and Knight as a deity. He got almost every top Indiana recruit and that was always a stud. When did Knight start losing? When he started missing on all those recruits. Why did he miss? Others paying.
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I also find it funny that when Prop 48 came out there were plenty of kids who were not eligible to play as freshmen. Studs like Larry Johnson and Glenn Big Dog Robinson. Now NOBODY fails the SAT. Id bet my life its all cheated.
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cragarhawk said:
@BShark kinda adds up. That’s when Knight’s teams really began to fall off badly
And when Duke took off. Plus the fab five and those Tark UNLV teams.
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BigBad said:
I also find it funny that when Prop 48 came out there were plenty of kids who were not eligible to play as freshmen. Studs like Larry Johnson and Glenn Big Dog Robinson. Now NOBODY fails the SAT. Id bet my life its all cheated.
Imagine being Derrick Rose, the only kid to get caught.
KU has had some partial qualifiers under Self. I still say what if Ben was eligible in 2012. That UK team was really good but maybe he makes enough of a difference. Ben was so good.
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That jumper was smooooooooth
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@BShark hell ya. Why not say it makes a difference. We still had a legitimate shot at beating UK that year as is. Couple balls bounce a different way and we win that game. One of my most favorite teams…
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Yeah I just can’t help but think he could have made the difference. Conner Teahan played 21 minutes a game for that team after all.
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Here is a question that has been intriguing me for awhile, but which I have never seen addressed:
Will adidas be sanctioned by the Frankfurt stock market (traded there, acc to Wikipedia) or Euro regulators if its agents are found in these cases to have engaged in widespread criminal activity on behalf of the company? We know the Euros are willing to impose huge fines on American companies (MSoft, Google, Facebook) that have done bad things in Europe. Will they punish one of their own for violations in America? Does the failure of the stock price to be very affected by the indictments play a role?
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Knight did not need to cheat, he had plenty of boosters working on the background doing the dirty work to steer kids to Indiana. I would say most coaches maintain a healthy distance to have plausible deniability but they generally know what’s happening even when they are not doing it hands on.
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@JayHawkFanToo If true, I am guessing the major NCAA violation called “failure to exercise institutional control” is essentially the failure to have enough obscuring layers in place to support schools’ Sgt Schultz act?
So, most schools have probably had boosters or friends of the program help recruits get laid. But Louisville had a BB staffer do it with hookers brought to their residence some 20 times. No layer at all, or the thinnest possible one, shielding Pitino. Should have used Uber or a cab, given the driver a grand or two, and had them taken to a local ‘restaurant’ for the innocent dinner planned for them to interact with the local Pole community–er, pole community.
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Incidentally, I had a close friend awhile back who worked in the 70s and 80s for a company that did lots of lighting and audio installations in the famous NYC clubs. He said they had a local brothel and high-end call girls pretty much on retainer and they would help convince financiers and club operators to choose his company.
It ain’t just basketball.
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@mayjay It’s in everything unfortunately especially the government.
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@kjayhawks Once, when we were discussing some scandal, a commodity lawyer once told me he had great faith in my integrity and fairness. Then he said that he was sure of it because I wasn’t important enough to bribe!
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@mayjay haha not sure if that’s an insult or compliment.
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Politicians are worse. A friend of mine had a flooring company and one time she was called to the home of a very well connected and wealthy businessman/politician in KCMO and asked to redo the carpeting for a house off Paseo Blvd. in KC where a lot of parties took place, basically around the clock. It was a big house with lots of private rooms and all the floors and most of the walls had shag carpeting and the bar was open 24/7. Heard a lot of stories about the parties and the people and “guests” that attended them.
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@BShark Why the assumption that what a defense lawyer says are facts?? His only job is to create doubt.
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Barney said:
@BShark Why the assumption that what a defense lawyer says are facts?? His only job is to create doubt.
Did I insinuate this somewhere? I’ve actually been having to clarify for people on twitter that closing arguments are not testimony and that he was asking the jury to make inferences.
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@BShark Sorry, the statement was not aimed at you at all, just the assumption that a defense lawyer doesn’t exaggerate and spin. The way it is being reported as fact is mind numbing to me.
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@Barney Completely agree.
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The reports do actually make it sound factual and it could very easily not be. That is a very true statement.
However, I think we can all agree, that everything that has come out at least points to a better chance that there is some validity there. It looks bad and smells bad.
And even with that it could all be bunch of crap. But I believe at least half the ppl on this site would say it’s naive to think so… I don’t personally remember seeing alot of that view before this all came out. But perhaps it didn’t need to be said prior. I could be wrong.
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@cragarhawk I was hoping Self wasn’t directly involved but the current stuff doesn’t look good obviously.
They don’t have enough to factually link Self to payments though, or they absolutely would have put that out there at trial.
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@BShark certainly, I mean that would be the biggest fish yet I’d think. If they had an actual smoking gun.
I.E. Self on tap asking Adidas rep to pay recruit this much $$$$.
I mean unless I’m mistaken it was said they had Pitino on a tap like that, and where has that gone? I’ve yet to hear about that tape being outted to the public. Does such a tape exist. Same thing for Sean Miller.
I think if they existed we would of heard them by now. Or… They’ve been buried by those whose best interest is to keep them buried.
I think we have to assume the same thing for Self. There either is no such recorded convo. Or… there is, and somebody doesn’t want anyone to know it.
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@cragarhawk I thought I remembered the Pitino and Laranaga (sp?) conversations but I could be mistaken. Either way if something was out there on Self it would have been leaked early like those or at the trial I would think.
If it got buried, well damn that means those guys really fell on the sword but given all the comments and testimony I don’t think that’s the case.
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@BShark it’s very possible I missed those if they actually came out. I bury my head in the sand news wise for the largest part of the year. I pay attention to a few things from about Late night thru late March/early April… And then I’m out. Lol
I was actually wondering to myself today…
Is that part of why the new contract with Adidas hasn’t been signed yet? It seems unlikely that we could be holding that as leverage for ppl to say the right things at trial… when unless I’m mistaken, those ppl are no longer employed by Adidas… lol
But it does seem somewhat strange and it’s reasonable I think to wonder exactly what the deal is with that. We may never really know how big this thing really is.
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cragarhawk said:
@BShark certainly, I mean that would be the biggest fish yet I’d think. If they had an actual smoking gun.
I.E. Self on tap asking Adidas rep to pay recruit this much $$$$.
I mean unless I’m mistaken it was said they had Pitino on a tap like that, and where has that gone? I’ve yet to hear about that tape being outted to the public. Does such a tape exist. Same thing for Sean Miller.
I think if they existed we would of heard them by now. Or… They’ve been buried by those whose best interest is to keep them buried.
I think we have to assume the same thing for Self. There either is no such recorded convo. Or… there is, and somebody doesn’t want anyone to know it.
Fabulous points you guys. This is not a good look for KU at all.
Im in North Carolina until next week and I keep walking past Duke tshirts and I always think G.D. Duke, cheating Mofo’s. Then Im like, Oh yah, the KU stuff.But really what we should all do is reserve judgement of any kind about Bill Self and the staff until such a time as we have enough info to make an informed decision. Which we may never get. This stuff kills me. To think that our program could be participating in things that are against the rules. I always thought that KU and Coach Self were above reproach to take a bit from @HighEliteMajor I think we all have to be disappointed by hearing these things. But, I also think we need to continue to be life long KU fans.
That will never change for me. Not until I hear about KU bringing in prostitutes for athletes or allegedly trying to cover up a murder or something. Has that ever happened?
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A wait and see approach really is best.
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Crimsonorblue22 said:
https://www.kansascity.com/sports/college/big-12/university-of-kansas/article220324810.html
Thanks. Lots of stuff here that wasn’t brought up much in other articles.
The full timeline article is also good.
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Here is a summary of the prosecutor’s closing argument at the FBI trial; looks like the Government just cleared KU. If there was a future trial, the opening argument by KU’s lawyers would be to quote the closing argument bu the government prosecutors.
The government contends the three men victimized the universities by causing prospects whose families had received improper benefits to provide inaccurate information on NCAA certification forms.
"If the universities had known about the defendants’ secret payments, they never would have issued those scholarships, they never would have put themselves in harm’s way and risked NCAA penalties, fines and forfeiture of contests," Solowiejczyk said.
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@JayHawkFanToo You can see how dishonest the prosecution was here. They were just successful in keeping certain information out of evidence, thus they could craft their closing around the “evidence” at the trial (which, of course, they have to do).
