The Fbi this morning (9/26) has conducted multiple arrests of NCAA basketball coaches and officials in what could become one of the sport's biggest scandals. Four assistant basketball coaches from major conferences were arrested after the U.S. Attorney and the FBI had been investigating criminal influences for over two years. Those four coaches are Tony Bland of the University of Southern California, Emanuel Richards of Arizona, Lamont Evans of Oklahoma State University, and Chuck Person of Auburn. There were also six other officials who were arrested and two unnamed universities in the investigation.
One of those universities, the University of Louisville, has since come out and said they are a part of the investigation. The other university has yet to be identified.
Who are the six other officials and their roles in this scheme?
While the biggest names that have come out of this investigation will be the four assistant coaches, the other six officials still have some power attached to their positions. Perhaps the biggest name is that of James Gotto, the director of global sports marketing at Adidas. Gotto has been accused of helping an unnamed university (now identified as the University of Louisville) funnel as much as $100,000 to an unnamed player and his family to influence the decision to play at that university, according to sworn statements from FBI agent John Vourderis.
Other names include Merl Code, a recent employee of Nike who has since moved to Adidas, Christian Dawkins, an NBA agent, and Jonathan Brad Augustine, president of The League Initiative and program director of the Adidas-sponsored 1 Family AAU program. Munish Sood, a financial advisor, and Rashan Michel, a founder of Thomas Bespoke Clothing, a custom clothing for athletes, were also implicated.
The four assistant coaches are accused taking brides between $10,000 and $13,000 to push players to hire Dawkins as their agent. Dawkins would then in turn would push those very same players to buy clothing from Thomas Bespoke Clothing, which former NBA referee Rashan Michel had founded. The trio of Gotto, Code, and Brad Augustine all allegedly worked together to pay players with the help of financial advisor Munish Sood.
The idea behind this scheme was to have the players play for universities and schools sponsored by Adidas, and sign with Dawkins and Sood, who would then see money flow to them once the players became professional and signed sponsorship deals with Adidas.
What's to come from this?
After the news broke this morning (9/26), all four of the schools whose assistant coaches were involved, denied knowing of any involvement and were quick to say they were cooperating with investigators. USC even went a step further and announced they were hiring Feech Group International Solutions, which is run by the former FBI director Luis J. Feech. The unnamed school has been identified as the University of Louisville.
When the FBI released the documents surrounding the investigation, the university was dubbed "University-6," whose enrollment was the same of that of Louisville for the 2016-17 school year and had the same number of athletic programs (21). The other university that remains unnamed is a private institution in Florida, with an enrollment of 16,000 students and 15 varsity sports.
