Yahoo! Sports reporters Pat Forde and Pete Thamel broke a huge story last week after uncovering documents that reveal corruption and several NCAA violations for big name programs in college basketball.
The documents included detailed accounts of the shady transactions that take place in the world of college basketball recruiting between players, coaches and agents. According to the documents, ASM Sports agent Andy Miller and his associate Christian Dawkins made payments or provided benefits to over 25 high school and college players, indicating that about 20 Division I programs broke NCAA rules.
The FBI's long-time investigation was first brought to light in late September when 10 men were arrested for corruption. Among these men were Auburn's Chuck Person, Oklahoma State's Lamont Evans, Emanuel Richardson from Arizona, and Tony Bland from USC. The four assistant coaches were indicted by a federal grand jury for receiving bribes from financial advisers and managers, promising they would push players from their respective schools to retain the advisor's services once in the NBA.
As the college basketball season began, there was a looming cloud over several programs. It had become clear that the FBI had been reviewing documents and wiretapping phone calls to investigate corruption since 2015. While the story seemed to quiet down for a few months, NCAA programs were on high alert.
And just in time for March Madness, the biggest event in all of college sports, the levee is on the verge of breaking.
Last weekend, ESPN reported that the FBI intercepted phone calls between Christian Dawkins from ASM Sports and Arizona head coach Sean Miller. These conversations included discussions about paying star Center Deandre Ayton $100,000 to play for the Wildcats this season. This is bad. A head coach has allegedly been caught in an obvious pay-for-play transaction.
Sean Miller has denied the accusations and remains Arizona's head coach as Ayton led the Wildcats to a Pac-12 regular season championship.
Blue blood programs with big name coaches like Kentucky, North Carolina, Duke and Kansas have to be asking who's next.
The landscape of college basketball could change dramatically and the NCAA model of amateurism as a whole will be challenged. Anyone with common sense who follows sports could tell you this underground side of recruiting was happening, and the uncovering of the rampant corruption makes the NCAA look silly for even seeming to believe otherwise.
“These allegations, if true, point to systematic failures that must be fixed and fixed now if we want college sports in America,” NCAA President Mark Emmert said. “Simply put, people who engage in this kind of behavior have no place in college sports.”
This story is big, and every power five conference program might be affected even if they are not mentioned in the investigation.
Ole Miss basketball's situation is interesting because it is looking to start a rebuild of the program this offseason as Andy Kennedy, the school's all-time winningest head coach, stepped down from his position after 12 years on the job.
Experts are predicting around 20 power five coaching gigs could come open as a result of the investigation, which could affect the Ole Miss coaching search. Ross Bjork is most likely looking to make a hire soon after the SEC Tournament next weekend. The investigation could benefit Ole Miss in a few ways.
Ole Miss, compared to other schools, is an attractive job considering it has been clean throughout all of this and is waiting for someone to build the program from the ground up, not to mention it has one of the best facilities in the SEC.
This also might level the playing field for Ole Miss' recruiting. The program has had problems reaching highly touted players out of high school, even from Mississippi, due to its lack of NBA connections. Andy Kennedy had to rely on graduate transfers and international players to build his teams and as the SEC got better as a basketball conference, that formula stopped working.
With powerhouse programs forced to recruit cleanly out of fear of the FBI, Ole Miss could hop in the running for a few local recruits that wouldn't be on the radar otherwise.
If those 20 coaches are fired, most of the players on those teams could also be eligible to be released from their LOI and transfer out. This could lead to a relocation of some talented players that Ole Miss could also possibly sign.
This investigation, while bad for college basketball and the NCAA as a whole, could be good for Ole Miss basketball. Ross Bjork will need to make a strong hire quickly in order to use this as a jump start for the rebuild of an underwhelming program.