PBS高端访谈:美国大学篮球曝出贿赂丑闻
时间：2017-10-27 00:43:52
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Finally tonight, yet another scandal has rocked the world of college basketball, and this time it's caught up some of the sport's biggest names. Jeffrey Brown has that.
Big money in college sports, that's no surprise. But today's charges expose a large web of allegedly
illicit2 connections.
A total of 10 people, assistant coaches, agents, financial
advisers3,
and a top executive at sportswear giant Adidas were charged with
bribery4 involving hundreds of thousands of dollars to influence student-athletes.
One of the accused is Chuck Person, an assistant coach at Auburn and former NBA player. The school suspended him without pay.
Charges were also brought against assistants at three other big basketball schools, Oklahoma State, the University of Arizona and the University of Southern California.
At a press conference this afternoon,
acting5 U.S. attorney Joon Kim said the case lays out -- quote -- "the dark underbelly of college basketball."
Month after month, the
defendants6 exploited the
hoop7 dreams of student-athletes around the country,
allegedly treating them as little more than opportunities to enrich themselves through bribery and fraud schemes.
Fraud, abuse, and
corruption8 of the type
alleged1 in the charges brought today contaminates all that is good and pure around it. And it has no place in college sports.
And I'm joined now from Detroit by Dan Wetzel. He's a national correspondent --
columnist9 for Yahoo Sports.
Dan, first, fill in the picture a little bit about some of these
accusations10 of
bribes11. What kind of actions are we talking about?
Well, the system is basically this. You have a shoe company, a sports agent, a financial planner,
and they are paying money to high school recruits and their families to attend a certain school, in this case ones that are associated mostly with Adidas.
Then, when those players get there and when they're at that school, the same group was paying bribes to assistant basketball coaches so that,
when the student-athletes turned
pro12 and went to the NBA, the assistant coaches who had earned their trust would
steer13 them to Adidas and this particular sports agency and this financial planner.
So, they were basically trying to put seed money out there to get potentially
lucrative14 clients in the future who would be big-money NBA players.
And these are -- that's the web I was talking about. These are big schools, right? These are big names in the world of sports, and, of course, a big company in Adidas.
Absolutely. You had -- four universities had assistant coaches arrested today.
In the grander scope, too, is you have NCAA
violations15, which may not be criminal, but the NCAA can come in and punish.
And you had the University of South Carolina and the University of Louisville, among others that we will find out, are already mentioned in that.
So, the scandal can be a sports scandal, as well as a legal one.
How big is it? Because, as I said, it's not that big a surprise to people who follow sports that there is a lot of money involved. But these are kind of blockbuster,
detailed16 charges.
The situation is significant, because college basketball has operated for generations with sort of a
wink17 and a nod, understanding that this stuff goes on. But it's very hard to prove it.
The fact that you have the FBI, undercover agents, wiretaps, financial data
analysts20 and the Department of Justice coming in and saying,
this is an
ongoing21 investigation, this is just the first series of arrests, and they can now lean on these people involved to try to get more dirt.
It can extend out to dozens of universities.
The Adidas executive alone, if he's willing to
flip22, in an effort to get some kind of
leniency23 or he's willing to tell the truth or everything he knows,
would have stories and implications at least at the NCAA level, if not federal law, on dozens of universities.
This could be certainly the biggest scandal in the history of college basketball in terms of the sheer number of schools in trouble.
Well, one wonders about the assistant coaches, of course, does that lead to the head coaches, better-known people?
But I know that sports --
knowledgeable26 sports people are sort of putting together two and two to figure out what other universities, what other names might be
implicated27.
Well, the University of Louisville is the biggest one implicated today. And they have acknowledged that they are in the investigation.
And they are linked to a $100,000 payout to a potential -- to a recruit that was signed by Louisville. That's obviously significant.
Rick Pitino is a Hall of Fame basketball coach. They have won numerous national championships at Louisville. And they're currently already on NCAA
probation28.
So, again, these allegations are extremely serious, not just legally with the feds, but with the NCAA, and that's why this could be a very, very big story.
And just very
briefly29, what kind of responses have come from the universities?
Southern California hired Louis Freeh, the former FBI director's law firm to investigate it.
There is no question, all over college sports, there is considerable nervousness and an
intensity31 to find out what's going on,
because this is no longer an NCAA case. It's a whole 'nother level when the FBI comes knocking on your door.
Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports, thank you very much. Thank you. undefined
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