surprised that Arizona has not made any move yet as one of the schools that are in bigger trouble. With all the heat on BB, maybe our old friend RichRod will have his seat cool down a bit.
I think a few schools are going through contracts and drafting positions with the utmost care and silence. No sense killing the brand with a boom.
Rick Pitino = scum of the earth
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An intriguing thought that I ponder is if Little Ricky over there in Minnesota is following the same playbook. They aren’t exactly recruiting at UL’s level, but the guy sure does come off as slick as his old man.
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I told my Gopher friends that it’s probably a good thing for them since I doubt any major program will be looking to hire a Pitino anytime soon.
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Probably already been mentioned here, but Rick Pitino, was a ‘conversation with his wife’ from being Michigan’s head coach instead of Beilein.
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Slick? Or slimy?
That was 2001. That would have been Amacker.
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Michigan was a Nike school back then?
Illinois will be an interesting one to watch as well; not for the program but because of its head coach. Underwood has ties to Oklahoma St, South Carolina, and one of the assistants arrested. No direct “fire” but that’s a lot of “smoke.”
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Forgot that Underwood was on staff with Lamont Evans at South Carolina as well. Good point.
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Has anyone proven that Adidas didn’t give her a bag of money to pass along to Pitino to help change his mind…
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I’m starting to wonder if Jim Delany is the puppet-master behind the investigations. So far no B1G programs* have been directly implicated and you can make a case the SEC & ACC (the 2 conference offices that talk the most smack about the B1G) have been hit the hardest…at least through 48hrs.
- when this is all said & done I can’t think of any plausible way that any of the top7 conferences will escape completely unscathed (power5 plus BigEast & American)
If I had had to guess before this FBI investigation happened who was the cleanest of the power 5 I probably would have said the B1G. I really can’t think of many coaches or programs that stick out to me as dirty programs, besides the questions around Underwood now at Illinois.
From what I have read, this started with the FBI investigating a financial advisor. From there, they kind of stumbled onto the basketball world of dirt.
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The Big 10 hasn’t had much star power the last few years, have they?
Outside of MSU…who have been able to talk guys into staying…wait…
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Evans was accused of taking money to steer one of his current players to a financial adviser. It wasn’t even someone he had recruited. That alone shouldn’t be a problem for Underwood, but I’m sure they are investigating Evans further.
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I know how the investigation started. I’m being tounge-in-cheek about Delany.
Still, this investigation has pulled back the (thin, see-through) curtain on such a systemic set of actions/violations that it is impractical to think some variation doesn’t go on in every conference. I’m not say “everyone” is dirty, but there are probably fewer than a dozen power conference schools that I would be willing to say “100% no way that school’s basketball program would ever get caught up in something like this.”
And I can think of 5 B1G programs that I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if that program ultimately was linked in to this (and each of those 5 may be clean, just my perception is they are programs that might be tempted to playing outside the lines).
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