Imagine the scene of a poorly-lit restaurant at the end of a long weekday.
It could be any day of the week, but let’s imagine it’s a Tuesday because no one really cares about Tuesday.
The local high school has been out of session for hours now, with practice and extracurricular activities recently finished, placing our story around 8 p.m.
Two men are sitting in the back corner of the restaurant, out of sight from the majority of the other tables. The age difference between the two is striking. One looks like a current high school student, and the other looks old enough to be the younger man’s father.
The two men rise from the table and shake hands. The older man pays the bill, and the two depart from the eatery in opposite directions.
The restaurant’s patrons and bus boys do not realize that the inception of an illegal deal has been formed in their midst. The young man, a gifted high school athlete, has agreed to commit to the older man’s university in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I have no idea if this is the way this type of quid pro quo takes place, but there are two certainties. You’re still reading this article because of that colorful story, and the illegal payment of college athletes is no fantasy.
On Sept. 26, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York revealed the findings of an FBI investigation that involved multiple top-tier NCAA Division 1 universities and the multi-million dollar sports apparel company Adidas.
The sport at the center of this controversy is basketball, and the schools embroiled in this quagmire are Louisville, Arizona, the University of Southern California, Miami, Oklahoma State, Auburn and South Carolina.
The claims against each university vary, but all of the allegations are par for the course as far as massive corruption in college athletics go.
High school prospects were offered hundreds of thousands of dollars to play at one university instead of another, university coaches were bribed to influence their players to sign with Adidas once their players enter the professional ranks and Adidas funneled money to universities to help those schools sign the top high school prospects.
These claims represent a vicious cycle of extreme misconduct, as well as one of the worst bribery scandals in NCAA history.
The FBI investigation also proves what many fans already believed to be true. College athletics is a shady business wrought with unseen scandal and illegal activity.
And why not? The universities and institutions make millions off of athletes who don’t get a slice of the fiscal pie.
High school and college athletes are left susceptible to the exorbitant amounts of money they are offered, and there is incentive for the universities to make these offers in order to keep their schools competitive and the gravy trains flowing.
I’m not advocating for any “pay-for-play” solution because the issue is more nuanced than some realize, and I’m simply not educated enough on this topic to give a worthwhile opinion.
I am saying that it is time for those who are well-briefed on the problem, namely the NCAA president and board of governors, to seriously discuss the issues at hand instead of turning a blind eye to the problems that money in college athletics creates.
To do otherwise would be a disservice to the fans, schools and athletes that follow the rules, and it would continue to taint the pure “love-of-the-game” reputation that amateur athletics are supposed to showcase.
