Whipped Cream Difficulties

This is a developing story.

Earlier today, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York announced indictments against 10 people on assorted bribery, fraud, and corruption charges.

The twist? Four of those people are college basketball assistant coaches, and at least one is a high-ranking executive at a shoe company.

The investigation has revealed “numerous instances” of bribes paid by athlete advisers, and others, to assistant coaches and sometimes directly to student-athletes at N.C.A.A. Division I universities, the complaint said. The bribes were designed to get commitments from college stars to work with specific agents and companies after they turned professional, or to convince coveted high schoolers to attend specific universities.

More:

One of the three indictments charges five people with wire fraud and money laundering in a scheme to pay high school athletes to attend particular universities…
The indictment says about $100,000 was to be paid to the family of “Player-10,” a heavily recruited high school all-American, to steer him to a particular college. It says contemporary news accounts described his college decision, announced this past June, as a surprise. Payments were arranged for other players’ families as well, the indictment says, including one who had not yet begun his junior year of high school.

I’m leaving out the names, even though they are in the linked NYT article, because innocent until proven guilty. Plus, this is the Southern District, which sometimes (in my opinion) pulls some questionable stunts.

But I kind of doubt they would have indicted this many people, especially assistant coaches, without some sort of evidence.

The indictments did not implicate any head coaches, perhaps for reasons explained by one of the defendants in an audio recording of a secret meeting. According to a transcript of comments by the prospective agent, Christian Dawkins, the path to securing commitments from college athletes was through assistant coaches, because head coaches “ain’t willing to [take bribes], cause they’re making too much money. And it’s too risky.”

Edited to add: “What you need to know about the FBI’s NCAA basketball investigation” from the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network’s website.

I love that little sting at the end.