I can almost guarantee you that the five-star kid today who IS clean is the exception. From what we already know, these agents, runners, and shoe companies reach back as early as possible to start recruiting blue chip kids with promises and financial incentives. The AAU circuit probably fosters those relationships, and all of these five-star kids are involved.
It would take a kid whose family is legitimately secure from a financial perspective and one who's taking pretty good advice for me to reason the kid is clean. They're all radioactive by default...
Doesn't have to narrow the selection to just 5-stars. There's no way it's just 5-stars. What? Because you're ranked 26th instead of 25th so you're a 4 instead of a 5 (hypothetical example) you get no offers for money? No way.
I think it's just time to stop questioning whether the player is clean or dirty. There's no way to truly know no matter the rank. I mean Silvio De Sousa was a 4* composite per 247. He is the most reasonable connection to part of the latest FBI connection.
I highly doubt Self knew about this. I highly doubt any coach knew about anything that comes out in the future, unless you're Mark Gottfried.
Unless we're saying that we're only going to accept 1-3 star players, which we'd get crushed by the big dogs in the ACC, even UVA has several 4* and NBA players on their team.
We just have to do our due diligence work at the best level we can and make sure we don't do anything on our end that's negative. I'm confident our coach and staff are going to do things the right way. That's all you can ask for as long as the NCAA allows these AAU programs, Sponsors, etc. to have an impact on the college game. Nothing is going to change until the NCAA draws the line.
We, nor any university, can control what the shoe company does. If they give the player money, that's not our fault, nor is it for us know. I mean by reading the FBI documents we've seen just how secretive and secluded this is. Heck, the FBI is still trying to dig stuff up. How are we or anyone else supposed to know?
The best we can hope for is to evaluate the players thoroughly and immediately put a red X at sight of trouble on the players end. I trust our new staff to do that. And that's not saying our old staff didn't, or at least Pitino. However, Jordan Fair was in the hotel room. That's not good.
Besides Dino, our entire staff is young and is entitled to the Players First program. I think more players will listen to that because Mack and staff are clearly like-able guys.
