CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Roy Williams has never been one to hide his disdain for sports agents, and that opinion was made clear once again this week as the Hall of Fame head coach criticized the NCAA for a rule change that grants agents greater access to elite basketball prospects.

In September 2017, the FBI and United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced the arrests of 10 men, including former ASM Sports employee Christian Dawkins, in a high-profile bribery scandal that intertwined coaches, agents and Adidas executives. Dawkins has received prison time for his role in brokering deals to steer elite basketball prospects to schools sponsored by Adidas. Dawkins previously worked for Andy Miller, the president of ASM sports and a prominent sports agent with ties to Adidas.

Miller relinquished his National Basketball Players Association certification in Dec. 2017. His office was raided the same day the FBI made its arrests. N.C. State disassociated itself with Miller in 2012 due to his ties with AAU coach Desmond Eastmond, who coached former Wolfpack players J.J. Hickson, Lorenzo Brown and Richard Howell.

Williams spoke out against agent involvement in March 2018, telling reporters he disagreed with the notion that agents could potentially offer unique advice to prospective early entrants to the NBA Draft.

“I've never had a player go in the draft that I didn't tell him almost exactly where he was going to be drafted,” Williams said last year. “So why do you need an agent to tell you what you want to hear so you will do what they want you to do?”

The NCAA created an independent Commission on College Basketball in response to the FBI investigation in October 2017. The Commission, headed by former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, offered its recommendations in April 2018 and the Division I Board of Directors implemented a variety of reforms last August, including the ability for college players who declare for the NBA Draft to hire NCAA-certified agents and still return to school. The NCAA would also extend that privilege to elite high school seniors if the NBA eliminates its one-and-done rule, which prevents prospects from entering the draft directly out of high school.

Williams didn’t hold back on Tuesday when asked his opinion of the new agent rule, which is now in effect.

“There's 353 Division I schools and they’ve had four assistants that they've put on trial,” Williams said. ‘Four out of 353, then every school’s got four assistants, so you got 1,500 guys. So, four out of 1,500 is a pretty good quota that everybody in the business world would accept. And yet, what happened was terrible. And who was involved? You had coaches involved, you had shoe companies involved, and you had agents involved. Now, this is just Roy Williams. I'm not speaking for anybody else. Again, coaches involved, shoe companies involved, agents involved.

“So the remedy was to do things against the coaches and give agents more access. Now, come on guys, you figure that out and tell me what the hell's going on. So, no, I'm not in favor of any of that kind of crap. Give agents more access?

“Heck, you guys are all intelligent. Okay? That would be like putting us in charge of our nuclear arms. We don't know what the crap we're doing. So, I can't figure that one out. I think the commission are very gifted people that are intelligent, that want to do the right things, but that one right there, somebody's going to have to go to bed early and get up early both to figure out how they can convince me that agents were involved and, oh, let's give them more access.”

In a memorandum sent to Division I athletic departments on March 13, the NCAA stated that a certification program had yet to be developed and that NBPA-certified agents were to be considered NCAA-certified agents until the program is created, which is expected to be operational no later than Aug. 1, 2019.

The NCAA announced earlier this month that at least six Division I basketball programs would receive notices of allegations for Level I violations this summer as a result of the federal government’s investigation.