I think you might agree, but there are too many thoughts here to jam into his thread, both as it applies to us and globally as it applies to the sport of College Basketball (and by extension the NBA):
1. My assumption when this stuff started breaking and sorting through it as it applies to us is that the playbook came from Nike and the people orchestrating stuff on Adidas' behalf were ex-Nike guys in the same way the Mariel Boatlift was loaded with released prisoners from Cuba's prisons. Adidas essentially ended up with the criminals ex of their archnemesis.
2. The playbook is this...with Nike--it seems to me--there is a pecking order for recruits. Duke and UK are CLEARLY their featured programs with North Carolina the only school capable of sharing that spotlight. It is sheerly transactional...Superstar 15 year old gets induced into Nike AAU and when it's all said and done that is almost like a Grassroots Tryout program for Nike talent. By the time they are 17 the talent sorts itself out and becomes more obvious, and that is when Nike identifies how good or how likely a kid is to be a true impact player. When they are a real top shelf talent they have to commit themselves to where they get the most ROI for the player...and that is the only three real high visibility nationwide programs in their employ Duke, UK or North Carolina. Local ties may complicate things somewhat but in the end Nike is most concerned with making sure that kid is locked into their product. In essence the college program is then their marketing agent. I don't know how they sort out the difference between a kid being down to UK, Duke or UNC but in the end I don't know that it matters to the shoe company--the kid is going to get paid through Nike and the true extent of Coach K's involvement, Calipari's or Williams' is do you really want the kid and can coach him.
When you hear the price tag for Brian Bowen was 100g's...is it really so implausible that there was a 200g pricetag rumored on Anthony Davis? Sheerly in terms of market value Kentucky--which won a Title with him in his one year--Nike--which signed him directly out of college and reupped him last year--and Anthony Davis--who obviously is in his second lucrative endorsement deal with Nike...everybody in that group would agree that $200,000 was money well-spent. Hell could anyone argue logically otherwise. On a lower level--Marquis Teague and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist signed Nike deals right out of college as did Lyles. And I want to reiterate this...it's not entirely inconceivable that on a payments level Calipari would have any involvement or know the pricetag himself anymore than Rick potentially knew about Bowen's (but I'm of the belief Rick ultimately found out before this case blew up). Since he's little more than the Operations Arm of the Nike Enterprise why should he know?
3. I am of the growing belief that this crisis will be the end of the NCAA Basketball Tournament as we know it and subsequently the NCAA as an amateur enterprise as we know it since the Tournament is the money stream into Indianapolis. The Tournament is currently 64 teams plus a couple play in games? How difficult will it really be when the Power Five conferences breakaway to form their own Tournament...with virtually the same number of teams already making up it's composition. And when the NCAA tries to perform some sort of Class Action Penalty against the guilty parties at the top of the current NCAA Basketball structure because they can't realistically: 1. Penalize their money makers by depriving both themselves and the money makers of the NCAA Tournament that is their lifeblood, and 2. can't realistically selectively punish--which is essentially what they've done in the cases of ND and UNC. I think the Power Five schools walk. They rebrand and rebid their version of the NCAA Tournament. They more or less do the same thing with the NCAA football Playoff. They make more money than God. They essentially put the NCAA out of business. They stop with the delusion of amateurism at that Power Conference level.
...and ultimately to do that, guess what they need more than television revenue and streaming which is petering out as a revenue stream. In the end the Shoe Companies become a necessary revenue source to pay the players which in essence they have done in some form or fashion already. It starts looking alot more like the European Soccer Development system in United European Football Association (UEFA to the Soccer Dorks among us). I hate to say this because it is a topic all it's own...but those folks pushing for an NBA franchise at the YUM Center are probably more visionary than anyone here would like to confess, because I think amateurism as we know is about to become a Twentieth Century phenomena.
4. Don't assume we're on some high moral ground just because we were the first and most visible Big Apple on this scheme on what surely is more to come and let me offer this as a reason why. Don't you have to be extraordinarily naive to believe that Brian Bowen DIDN'T get 100,000 as an inducement to come to Louisville, that a European prospect playing in Florida was virtually locked in at $150,000 from the Class of 2019...and what, we skipped paying anyone named Anfernee Simmons and potentially Romeo Langford and Moses Brown in the Class of 2018 because Rick suddenly was in the One and Done Train? Given that...when that exodus from the NCAA happens don't assume it will be by conference or by football or even basketball power structure...it may have as much to do with Shoe Company selection.
5. One thing I will find very interesting and I suspect you'll start hearing that right about now...the number of high end College Coaching names whose names suddenly are getting whispered by Agencies as having interest in an NBA head coaching job. Hell I'd do it for no other reason than there is no guarantee that there will be a College Basketball with the insane disparity in salary between a Coach K or Calipari and the coaches in say the current Big East. If I'm Jay Wright and can be reasonably certain that my beloved employer Villanova isn't going to be in on the Power Five Exodus? I'm taking the first subway out of Philly. The irony of the uncovering of the filth at the highest level in the sport will be there is no future for the lesser weights who didn't have the Marketability of the Shoe Companies in order to be in on the cheating.
1. My assumption when this stuff started breaking and sorting through it as it applies to us is that the playbook came from Nike and the people orchestrating stuff on Adidas' behalf were ex-Nike guys in the same way the Mariel Boatlift was loaded with released prisoners from Cuba's prisons. Adidas essentially ended up with the criminals ex of their archnemesis.
2. The playbook is this...with Nike--it seems to me--there is a pecking order for recruits. Duke and UK are CLEARLY their featured programs with North Carolina the only school capable of sharing that spotlight. It is sheerly transactional...Superstar 15 year old gets induced into Nike AAU and when it's all said and done that is almost like a Grassroots Tryout program for Nike talent. By the time they are 17 the talent sorts itself out and becomes more obvious, and that is when Nike identifies how good or how likely a kid is to be a true impact player. When they are a real top shelf talent they have to commit themselves to where they get the most ROI for the player...and that is the only three real high visibility nationwide programs in their employ Duke, UK or North Carolina. Local ties may complicate things somewhat but in the end Nike is most concerned with making sure that kid is locked into their product. In essence the college program is then their marketing agent. I don't know how they sort out the difference between a kid being down to UK, Duke or UNC but in the end I don't know that it matters to the shoe company--the kid is going to get paid through Nike and the true extent of Coach K's involvement, Calipari's or Williams' is do you really want the kid and can coach him.
When you hear the price tag for Brian Bowen was 100g's...is it really so implausible that there was a 200g pricetag rumored on Anthony Davis? Sheerly in terms of market value Kentucky--which won a Title with him in his one year--Nike--which signed him directly out of college and reupped him last year--and Anthony Davis--who obviously is in his second lucrative endorsement deal with Nike...everybody in that group would agree that $200,000 was money well-spent. Hell could anyone argue logically otherwise. On a lower level--Marquis Teague and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist signed Nike deals right out of college as did Lyles. And I want to reiterate this...it's not entirely inconceivable that on a payments level Calipari would have any involvement or know the pricetag himself anymore than Rick potentially knew about Bowen's (but I'm of the belief Rick ultimately found out before this case blew up). Since he's little more than the Operations Arm of the Nike Enterprise why should he know?
3. I am of the growing belief that this crisis will be the end of the NCAA Basketball Tournament as we know it and subsequently the NCAA as an amateur enterprise as we know it since the Tournament is the money stream into Indianapolis. The Tournament is currently 64 teams plus a couple play in games? How difficult will it really be when the Power Five conferences breakaway to form their own Tournament...with virtually the same number of teams already making up it's composition. And when the NCAA tries to perform some sort of Class Action Penalty against the guilty parties at the top of the current NCAA Basketball structure because they can't realistically: 1. Penalize their money makers by depriving both themselves and the money makers of the NCAA Tournament that is their lifeblood, and 2. can't realistically selectively punish--which is essentially what they've done in the cases of ND and UNC. I think the Power Five schools walk. They rebrand and rebid their version of the NCAA Tournament. They more or less do the same thing with the NCAA football Playoff. They make more money than God. They essentially put the NCAA out of business. They stop with the delusion of amateurism at that Power Conference level.
...and ultimately to do that, guess what they need more than television revenue and streaming which is petering out as a revenue stream. In the end the Shoe Companies become a necessary revenue source to pay the players which in essence they have done in some form or fashion already. It starts looking alot more like the European Soccer Development system in United European Football Association (UEFA to the Soccer Dorks among us). I hate to say this because it is a topic all it's own...but those folks pushing for an NBA franchise at the YUM Center are probably more visionary than anyone here would like to confess, because I think amateurism as we know is about to become a Twentieth Century phenomena.
4. Don't assume we're on some high moral ground just because we were the first and most visible Big Apple on this scheme on what surely is more to come and let me offer this as a reason why. Don't you have to be extraordinarily naive to believe that Brian Bowen DIDN'T get 100,000 as an inducement to come to Louisville, that a European prospect playing in Florida was virtually locked in at $150,000 from the Class of 2019...and what, we skipped paying anyone named Anfernee Simmons and potentially Romeo Langford and Moses Brown in the Class of 2018 because Rick suddenly was in the One and Done Train? Given that...when that exodus from the NCAA happens don't assume it will be by conference or by football or even basketball power structure...it may have as much to do with Shoe Company selection.
5. One thing I will find very interesting and I suspect you'll start hearing that right about now...the number of high end College Coaching names whose names suddenly are getting whispered by Agencies as having interest in an NBA head coaching job. Hell I'd do it for no other reason than there is no guarantee that there will be a College Basketball with the insane disparity in salary between a Coach K or Calipari and the coaches in say the current Big East. If I'm Jay Wright and can be reasonably certain that my beloved employer Villanova isn't going to be in on the Power Five Exodus? I'm taking the first subway out of Philly. The irony of the uncovering of the filth at the highest level in the sport will be there is no future for the lesser weights who didn't have the Marketability of the Shoe Companies in order to be in on the cheating.
