Latest NCAA Scandal

Happy to see you guys make it back for yet another one of our blog entries on D&K Fadeaway Scoop. Up until this point we’ve filled you in on many NCAA violations and scandals such as the Zion Williamson investigation and the Cam Newton trial within the NCAA. We could continue to give you many more investigations or scenarios of money involvement with student athletes and programs violating NCAA rules which we will, or we can just reverse the rolls and tie it all back into the main issue or point we were trying to make originally. To our readers and viewers that have kept up with our prestige blog you know what our main question was and still is. Do you think student athletes should get paid? Have we changed any of you guy’s opinions or thoughts on the subject at hand with our written entries and videos? Have your thoughts remained the same about the topic? Or from the start you knew that there was nothing that could be said to alter your thinking about the subject. This is what we, as bloggers, want to know.
Here’s one of the biggest NCAA scandals/violations of them all that could steer your thinking. In 2017 there was a huge investigation involving Adidas and several school programs’ players and coaches. Essentially Adidas was trying to bribe certain players to go to an Adidas sponsored school, which would benefit them. Along with the bribing of players they did it with the coaches as well to ensure the coaches got those players to the schools. A big name that you may know now involved in this was high flying dunking guard for the Dallas Mavericks, Dennis Smith Jr… His father received 40,000 big ones in order to ensure his commitment to North Carolina State, and to sign with Adidas once he reached the NBA. It ended up going south for Adidas as he now is represented by Under Armor. Several school programs were involved in this and many coaches got fired immediately. Just goes to show you that money really is the root of all evil in a sense, and especially with the NCAA. James Gatto the Adidas executive was the main guy involved with the money and the bribing. Gatto was among a group that beginning around October 2016 and continuing until around November 2017, conspired to illegally funnel approximately $90,000 from Company-1 Adidas to the mother of a top high school basketball player, according to court documents. The payments were made in connection with a commitment by the student-athlete to attend the University of Kansas, a school sponsored by Adidas and with the expectation that the student-athlete would sign with Adidas upon entering the NBA. It is clear that programs and big time brands such as an Adidas are willing to go far and beyond to bring in certain guys. With NCAA basketball and football being essentially a billion dollar industry there’s plenty of money to go around especially with the major colleges in those sports. Like your Dukes, Kentucky’s, and Kansas’s of college basketball and your Alabama’s, Michigan’s, and Ohio States of college football.
One of the bigger situations in this Adidas scandal happened with the University of Louisville, where head basketball coach, Rick Pitino, seemed to get the bad end of the stick. It was alleged that Rick Pitino and another coach had been involved in a situation where top recruit, Brian Bowen, was funneled $100,000 for his family by Adidas to ensure he signed to the University of Louisville. Apparently about a month before this scandal was found out, Louisville had agreed upon a ten-year extension with Adidas. This could have possibly been because Adidas had delivered what Pitino wanted so they made a deal to extend their partnership. The reason we mentioned that Rick Pitino seemed to have been given the bad end of the stick is because once this scandal was investigated and found out about by the NCAA, Pitino was of course fired from being the University of Louisville’s head basketball coach, which possibly could have ended his entire coaching career as a whole. This wasn’t the only scandal that Pitino had been investigated for; he also was involved in one that ultimately led to Louisville basketball being vacated of their 2013 National Title, so this was the last straw for him and he had to be let go. This scandal also led to the decommittments of multiple recruits because it’s hard to wrap your mind around being a part of an organization that has just been put in the doghouse.
We want to thank all of our viewers for being involved and reading our blog. Please comment and let us know if you want us to continue, but for now we are finished!