The Justice Department and FBI’s interest in prosecuting college basketball corruption extends as far as findings of corruption take them. As federal authorities gather more evidence and knowledge, other individuals will likely face charges. In fact, authorities have probably mapped out a pyramid or row of names of significant figures in college basketball. Notes detailing possible ties to criminal acts likely accompany some of those names.
Think of college basketball, then, as a network of crime families with various syndicates and associations. (Emphasis added.)
The purpose of these alleged criminal conspiracies? To get young jocks laid and paid.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently announced a sting designed to expose “the dark underbelly of college basketball”. Juvenal initially assumed this meant that some unfortunate FBI agent was going to lift Charles Barkley’s jersey. Instead, our tax dollars are being used to investigate how our other tax dollars are being used to prop up a corrupt NCAA system that apparently exists to get young athletes laid and paid.
One of J. Edgar Hoover’s best men, U.S. Attorney Joon Kim, explained a multi-year investigation that uncovered fraud, pay-for-play, and kickback allegations in the men’s basketball programs of multiple public institutions of “higher learning”. We are hearing the inevitable cries of how the powers that be at these institutions are shocked (shocked!), and seeing the suspension and firing of assistant coaches and other staff. The implicated institutions, so far, are:
The University of Louisville (2017 budget – $1.28 billion; federal and state funding – over $200 million);
The University of Arizona (2017 budget – $2.51 billion; federal and state funding – over $567 million);
Auburn University (2017 budget – $1.27 billion; federal and state funding – over $270 million);
Oklahoma State University (2017 budget – $1.29 billion; federal and state funding – over $215 million);
The University of Southern California (not public, but 2016 budget – $4.47 billion; federal and state funding – not available).
One said she was paid roughly $300 for a night of stripping and one sexual encounter with a recruit. Another woman, who asked to go by the name Mandy, said she went to a party at Minardi Hall [Louisville’s athletic dorm] in 2010 or 2011. Mandy estimated that she was 17 at the time and had yet to graduate from high school.
She said Powell explained the purpose of the party: “Basically to help people come to Louisville.”
Mandy said there were seven to nine girls at the party the night she danced. When they first arrived, she said, [Katina] Powell [the madam] led them into a room where there was just one man. After changing clothes, Mandy said, Powell sent the women in pairs into what looked like a large dorm room that was packed with 10 to 15 men, most of whom appeared to be basketball players.
“It would be a lot of guys, and they all had chairs,” Mandy said. “I was excited because Peyton Siva was there.”
Mandy said Siva, a four-year point guard who played on the Cardinals’ 2013 NCAA championship team, autographed her chest, a detail Powell also recalled when asked about that evening. Siva, who also was mentioned in Powell’s book, could not be reached for comment.
Mandy estimated she made another $400 to $500 that night in tips, as the men threw one-dollar bills at her feet.
Mandy said that none of the dancers that evening had sex with the players and questioned Powell’s claims about sex-for-cash “side deals,” although she said it was possible dancers had done so without her knowledge.
Powell, in her book and in the interview with Outside the Lines, said Louisville recruits JaQuan Lyle, Antonio Blakeney, Jordan Mickey and Terry Rozier all had sex during their recruiting visits. Lyle, Blakeney and Mickey either could not be reached for comment or declined to comment.
Louisville is – or was – coached by Rick Pitino, a true basketball blue-blood, who earlier led one of the NCAA’s most storied programs at the University of Kentucky, and in his college career won two NCAA championships amidst seven Final Four appearances. (When not coaching at the college level, he also served as head coach of the NBA’s Boston Celtics and New York Knicks.) Did he reach the peak of the college coaching profession by being an outlier in terms of his shady recruiting practices, or because he perfected the model of getting his recruits laid and paid?
Though Mr. Turner is undoubtedly a creep, guilty of violating a young woman, and was justifiably (though insufficiently) punished, Juvenal’s eyebrows raised at learning the victimized young woman was nearly comatose, with blood alcohol content between 0.22-0.25%. In layman’s terms, this means that one more drink could have left her with a medical condition known as “low possibility of death“. (It seems this condition can be avoided by not consuming the equivalent of seven alcoholic beverages in the space of approximately one hour.)
If one were to draw the conclusion that the young woman did herself no favors by drinking herself nearly into oblivion then attempting to walk home alone in the early hours of the morning, this would be what is called “blaming the victim.”
Juvenal is certainly not interested in playing the blame game. He is, however, interested in the role that feminism plays in ensuring that our young women are simultaneously free to make any decisions their heart (or anything else) desires, and to remain free from consequences for those decisions.
On the college campus, this requires a regime of federal Title IX enforcement officers – Big Sisters, let’s call them – to whom co-eds can report unwanted, perhaps even regretted, sexual attention. But it may also require those enforcement officers to cast a (color)blind eye toward African-American men.
Credit The Atlantic with addressing this issue head on, publishing a hand-wringing essay to ask the hard-hitting question, “Is the system biased against men of color?” Here’s one anecdote from The Atlantic’s piece:
In the 2013–14 academic year, 4.2 percent of Colgate’s students were black. According to the university’s records, in that year black male students were accused of 50 percent of the sexual violations reported to the university, and they made up 40 percent of the students formally adjudicated.
One could interpret this as an indication that African-American men are involved in campus sexual assaults in disproportionate numbers. But this is the kind of conclusion drawn only by those on the wrong side of history. Alternatively, one could interpret the situation like author Emily Yoffe:
…it certainly seems possible that unconscious biases might tip some women toward viewing a regretted encounter with a man of a different race as an assault.
What a clever way of resolving cognitive dissonance! Effectively explaining the apparent epidemic of campus sexual assaults by African-Americans as “regret rapes,” Yoffe absolves black men of their guilt for campus sexual assaults, while also absolving white women of any responsibility for their decisions. (We can leave aside the question of whether having sex with a black man makes a young feminist coed an “ally” even if she later reports him for rape.) Meanwhile, the faces of campus rape become arch-villains like Haven Monahan – who, remember, does not exist – and Brock Turner – a dirtbag, no doubt, but one who did not, strictly speaking, commit a rape.
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