Northwestern's Ryan Fieldhouse

It began as “a college basketball problem,” specifically, a college basketball problem among a handful of programs affiliated with Adidas. It inevitably has become “a college football issue” with recent trial testimony pointing a finger at some of the nation’s most storied and prestigious programs.

Dating back many decades, scandal within intercollegiate athletics always has been a part of the game. Within “amateur athletics” – two words diametrically opposed to one another as the money involved escalates – the fight to maintain the standards upon which the NCAA and its police branch were founded grows stronger.

Today, with $150 million annual athletic budgets, shoe/apparel contracts, and coaches’ salaries shooting well past seven figures (and rapidly approaching eight figures), the model upon which intercollegiate athletics was built has been broken. Broken for quite some time, according to Don Jackson.

“Unpaid labor force, almost by definition, breeds a black market,” said Jackson, a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and founder of The Sports Group, which has represented universities, coaches and student-athletes for the last 27 of the 29 years he’s been practicing law.

“In the absence of changes to the current NCAA model of amateurism, it is a breeding ground for this type of conduct, whether that’s basketball or football.”

BLAZING A SORDID TRAIL

Marty Blazer is not a reputable man. A financial advisor out of Pittsburgh, Blazer pleaded guilty to wire and securities fraud, lying to the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), and aggravated identity theft. Recently, he testified as a cooperating witness for the FBI in a U.S. District Court in Manhattan. He said he paid college football players from hundreds to thousands of dollars from 2000-14.

Blazer said he paid family members and associates of football players at Notre Dame, Alabama, Michigan, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Northwestern and North Carolina. In exchange, Blazer would be their financial advisor upon turning professional. He said he never paid a college coach.

“Notre Dame is unaware of the misconduct Blazer alleged today,” said Paul Brown, Notre Dame’s vice president for public affairs and communications to the Chicago Tribune in late-April. “We highly prize ethical conduct and will seek to determine if Blazer or anyone else sought to compromise any of our students in that regard.”

In October of 2018, former Adidas executive Jim Gatto, former financial advisor Christian Dawkins, and former Adidas consultant Merl Code were found guilty of bribery, conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit services wire fraud, and Travel Act conspiracy.

Dawkins and Code allegedly bribed five assistant basketball coaches at several universities to encourage their players to sign with Dawkins upon turning professional. They were sentenced in March to six-to-nine months.

The three were part of a plan to provide cash and other benefits to families of top NBA prospects to coerce them to Adidas-sponsored products and certain agents/financial planners once they became professionals.

The basketball trial morphed into a football trial as well when Blazer – in an attempt to recoup financial losses from failed investments – landed in trouble with the SEC. To the surprise of many who thought this was just about basketball, Blazer testified to his involvement in college football.

Although Blazer didn’t name names, his implications suggested that one NFL player’s father was an assistant coach at Penn State. That assistant coach is presumed to be Larry Johnson Sr.

Blazer also said that a coach asked him to pay a Penn State player’s father $10,000 so the player would remain at Penn State instead of entering his name in the NFL Draft. That implicated former Penn State player Aaron Maybin. Blazer also made statements that pointed to former North Carolina receiver Hakeem Nicks as one of the players involved.

Nothing that Blazer said in his sworn testimony directly tagged a specific Notre Dame player. His claim of paying players from 2000-14 would overlap the tenures of four head football coaches at Notre Dame – Bob Davie, Tyrone Willingham, Charlie Weis and Brian Kelly.

“He’s obviously someone with questionable credibility,” said Jackson of Blazer. “Notwithstanding his credibility issue, could there be an element of truth in his comments? There absolutely could be. I would not be surprised.

“Just because a witness has credibility issues doesn’t mean he’s not telling the truth. He could very easily be telling the truth in everything that he said. Up to this point, because of the position he’s in, (Blazer) really doesn’t have an incentive to lie. He’s got every incentive at this point to tell the truth.”

Jackson cited Notre Dame as one of the schools that tries to stay above the muck within college athletics.

“Notre Dame is not one of those schools,” said Jackson of the schools that shortchange the student part of student-athletes. He acknowledged recent first-round draft choice Jerry Tillery for his internship at a hedge fund in Ireland and his well-rounded background as a football player with the Irish from 2015-18.

“That’s what college athletics is supposed to be about,” Jackson said. “That model is not followed everywhere. (Tillery) is probably a better student than he is football player. When he finishes football, he’s going to have a well-rounded life. I love to see that model of the student-athlete.

“But that model is not consistent all over college athletics like it is at Stanford, Notre Dame, Virginia, Wisconsin, Northwestern…Those schools have athletes that fit that model, and they’ve done it for generations.

OF EXCESS, INEQUALITY AND TEMPTATION

This is about opportunity and temptation, the greed of those selling and the needs of many, arguably most major college student-athletes in football and basketball. Schools such as UCLA are signing 10-year, $280 million contracts with apparel companies like Under Armour. Five years ago, Notre Dame signed a 10-year, $90 million contract with Under Armour.

Clemson head football coach Dabo Swinney recently signed a contract that will pay him in excess of $9 million per year. The building of facilities has become an arms race. Excess is the norm, even at places like academic-oriented Northwestern, which opened a $270 million facility in August of 2018 on a Lake Michigan beach in Evanston, Ill.

Clemson installed a slide from the second to the first floor of the 142,000-square foot Allen N. Reeves Football Complex, which opened in 2017, just for the fun of it. It also includes a 24-seat HD theater and production studio, a Whiffle ball field, a two-lane bowling alley, and a nine-hole miniature golf course.

Money to attract the nation’s top football talent truly is no object. Mixed in with the excess, student-athletes become easy targets.

“We’ve got college coaches making $9 million a year and we’ve got student-athletes on the field or the court that sometimes can’t even afford to go out to a movie,” Jackson said. “That’s a system that’s distorted. It’s impossible under the current system to fully regulate programs in college sports and effectively enforce the current model of amateurism.”

At the recent Final Four in Minneapolis, 71,000 people attended the semifinals and 72,000 were on hand for the championship game. The game program at U.S. Bank Stadium for the Final Four sold for $20.

“There are families that can’t afford to spend $20 on a game program, and those families have players participating in the Final Four,” Jackson said. “The athletic department has a $150 million budget. The head football coach is making $9 million a year. The offensive and defensive coordinators are making $2 million. The head basketball coach is making $5 million a year. We have strength coaches making $990,000 a year.”

And yet Auburn – a Final Four participant – had an assistant coach that had entered a guilty plea in a federal bribery case and another that was on administrative leave for being implicated in a college admissions scandal at the University of Pennsylvania.

“They had two players who sat a combined two and a half years for having accepted payments from the coach that entered a guilty plea,” Jackson said. “They have another player on that team that was investigated for a full year and missed a whole year as a result of that.

“There’s something troubling about that picture when you talk about other schools doing things the right way.”

Kansas basketball player Silvio De Sousa was forced to sit out the 2018-19 season and faced a two-year suspension for his guardians allegedly accepting payments. Meanwhile, Kansas just renegotiated its apparel contract with the same company from which the payments allegedly derived. While De Sousa sat, head coach Bill Self made in excess of $5 million a year.

“I see too many young people who have a margin of error between success and failure that’s about an inch wide,” Jackson said. “They’re walking onto these campuses and they’re not getting any help. You come to this campus and an agent offers you $1,000 a month or $2,000 a month or a car. Do you think these kids care about NCAA rules? A lot of them are worrying about getting from one day to another financially.

“For me, that’s tragic, especially in a system that’s generating so much revenue and flaunting that revenue. When you’re building sliding boards from the second to the first floor, that’s flaunting your success.

“The current model doesn’t work. It’s a model that was based in the 1930s. It doesn’t work.”

THE NCAA’S SLOW SHIFT

Don Jackson has more confidence than most. He believes the NCAA is starting to get it. Decisions made concerning athletes and their ability to move from one school to the next while gaining immediate eligibility are on the rise.

Part of it is recognizing that the student-athlete needs more from a system that clearly is generating an excess of cash through their athletic skills. Part of it is a realization that the legality of using student-athletes for the extreme financial gain of an institution has run its course.

“I have a high degree of confidence this will happen,” said Jackson of student-athletes at least getting enough of a stipend to offset the cost of basic needs. “We see a softening of the NCAA’s old positions on transfers, cost of attendance, stipend payments to student-athletes…It’s a softening that’s occurring because there is some real concern about all of these federal lawsuits filed and anti-trust law challenges.

“Do I think it’s going to happen overnight? No, I do not. Do I think it’s going to happen in the next three to five years? I do. The reality of the matter is there’s so much money floating around the system right now.”

The court of law has become another one of the venues where collegiate athletics takes place.

“I’ve represented student-athletes in transfer cases and transfer waivers for quite a number of years,” Jackson said. “There were more transfer waivers granted this year than any year in the past. Why did that happen? For one very realistic reason: these transfer restrictions violate the restraints on mobility, the restraints on trade. They violate Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

“The NCAA knows that. They have been threatened over and over again – including by me – that student-athletes were going to sue them over these restraints. As a result of that, they appear to be taking a more common sense approach to transfer restrictions. That’s another change that’s happening, albeit in slow motion.”

Change is happening – gradually – because it ultimately has to keep pace with the evolution of college athletics, which sprinted past amateurism a long, long time ago.

“It’s a gradual move in the direction of reexamination this whole concept of amateurism,” Jackson said. “I just don’t believe the enforcement staff can force the legislation in a way to avoid situations like that, whether it’s football, basketball or any other sport.”

THE END RESULT

So what will become of Blazer’s accusations and how it pertains to Notre Dame and other schools? Possibly nothing. Whereas a court of law has subpoena power, the NCAA does not. Players accused who left college long ago have no obligation to respond to requests from the NCAA. The statute of limitations comes into play. The ability of the NCAA to “follow the money trail” is very limited compared to the court system.

“Unless this information is provided by the justice department and the U.S. Attorney’s office, (the NCAA is) not going to have access to all of the evidence in these cases,” Jackson said. “They likely won’t have access to the witnesses in these cases because they don’t have subpoena power.

“It’s just not going to be that easy for them to thoroughly investigate all of the allegations that have come out during the course of the last year and half of the student-athletes who have been implicated. In many instances, their eligibility is up and they have no incentive to cooperate.”

And so it goes. Apparel contracts, state-of-the-art-and-beyond athletic facilities, lucrative TV and radio agreements, and merchandise sales continue to escalate. Change as it pertains to equitable compensation of student-athletes with high-level skills has taken time. Of greater importance is assuring the safety of student-athletes within the normal course of preparation for competition.

In January of 2017, several Oregon football players were hospitalized with rhabdomyolysis, a syndrome in which soft muscle tissue is broken down and “leaks into the blood stream,” according to the NCAA medical handbook. In August of 2018, University of Maryland football player Jordan McNair died during an off-season workout.

“When you throw those things into the equation, you’ve got people realizing the system is not working, and it’s not just me, a person who is involved in the system,” Jackson said. “When one strength coach makes a million dollars a year, it motivates others to think, ‘Maybe I can make a million dollars a year, too.’

“The media, and even to some degree, the fans are starting to look at this. The ordinary fan says, ‘I don’t think they should be paid.’ But now you’ve got people more knowledgeable about the system that are saying, ‘Now hold on!’

“I’m passionate about this because I see it every…single…day. You see inequities and that’s why I’m not surprised by anything. The current system breeds that kind of environment. In this type of system, it incentivizes cheating and overworking players.”