Yahoo Sports story

Sorry if this has been posted before. Probably some valid points. https://sports.yahoo.com/kansas-playing-victim-recruiting-scandal-rankling-many-college-basketball-204538312.html

Possibly. Some crafty journalism and opinion-facts - he raises the compliance issue while KU has been publicly proactive by sitting players during investigations.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm trying to figure out how KU being "named a victim" by/in a Federal indictment is the same as KU "claiming to be" a victim. Someone help me out here, but thems apples and oranges in my book yet Misery-Grad Forde seems to think that it's equal.

I saw this over the weekend. After I read it, I thought the author had taken a big bite out of a sour lemon. I looked him up. When I saw he was a Moo grad.....FAKE NEWS.

when in Rome.........

Not worth the read. Total crap. Has KU had a string of sketchy recruits that have parents who have taken money or something? Well it appears possibly so. I don't think money is going to players ranked 100. The money is likely orbiting around the top players. KU recruits the top players at a much higher frequency than most schools. I don't keep on top of this stuff much other than this site and the associated links but it seems to me that other schools that regularly recruit top players have these issues as well. This seems to be an Adidas issue and unfortunately, KU is an Adidas school. I wish we weren't but we are. If KU does everything correctly (which I sure hope they do and based on what I have read it seems they have) you can't attach culpability to KU just because they have a few recruits who are indicated in an investigation. Ask a prosecuting attorney how far he would take a case based on the "where there is smoke there must be a fire." If smoke is the suspicion of guilt and fire is the proof then even if there is a lot of smoke the case will go nowhere until the fire is discovered. In this case, you can equally make the case if your bias leaned pro-KU that "poor KU". It sucks that they are potentially tainted because they were unlucky enough to recruit some people who had parents poor guardians who don't follow the rules. If you go all Joe Friday and look at "just the facts ma'am" then KU seems to be a victim. If you want to editorialize to make a biased point then you can spin it about any way you want. Right now the facts are in KU's favor. I hope and pray they stay that way. Having said all that, it sure would be nice to have a couple seasons without drama. But when you are talking about 18-20 year old prima donnas, drama seems to be a natural part of the mix.

The article is garbage as it could apply to any team that regularly graces the top 10 in the rankings and gets top recruits.

At the same time, I'm highly skeptical when it comes to this stuff. Don't get me wrong, I believe (currently) HCBS does things the right way, but I'm not anywhere near 100% certain that KU or any other program is perfectly clean. If I woke up tomorrow and found out that we were guilty of major infractions I'd be enormously disappointed, but I can't say that I would be completely surprised. That's the unfortunate nature of what college basketball has become, and it's getting harder and harder for me to be a fan.

Even if Self is clean, it's always possible that an assistant or somebody else in the program is up to no good. Again, this could be said for ANY program, which is also frightening because all it takes is one person in the program to do something wrong, and you can bring down the whole program.

So this leads me to my biggest fear: the difference between innocence and deniability. We've all seen it in the movies, the bad guy keeps himself intentionally isolated from his minions' evil. When a minion gets caught, the bad guy acts surprised and demands that the minion be punished for his evildoing. The same could be said for any of the supposed "clean" programs. If the program doesn't officially know about things, then they can claim ignorance and innocence. The worst part is that it's REALLY REALLY hard to prove that this kind of thing could be going on.

The Preston case does give me some hope, however. While we'll never know if anybody in the program knew about him getting money, the moment they found out about his car, they slammed on the brakes and benched him until it could be investigated. Whether that's because they were concerned about getting caught for something they already knew about, or whether this was their first indication that something was wrong, we'll never know. Regardless, they probably COULD have looked the other way and gotten away with it, and they chose to do the opposite.

As a leader with mid-level leaders under me, it is my opinion that you can break leaders of college basketball programs into 4 categories.

1. Actively Corrupt
2. Passively Corrupt
3. Potentially Corrupt
4. Incorruptible

1. Actively Corrupt -- Let's take Kelvin Sampson as an example when he was at OU. He broke the rules and knew he was breaking them. He was just hoping he could get away with it. There are a spectrum of coaches in this category, all the way from funneling money from boosters (10 on a scale of 1 to 10) to having a conversation at a high school game with a parent that is rigorously not allowed (1 on a scale of 1 to 10). I have no idea how common this is but I would not be surprised if it turned out to be a pretty good percentage.

2. Passively Corrupt -- is aware of and actively tries to avoid breaking the rules but is prone to turn a blind eye or claim ignorance of corruption surrounding him. This seems to be the story of Rick Pitino although he denies it. I don't have any idea how common this is either but again, I would not be surprised if it turned out to be fairly common.

3. Potentially Corrupt -- This is the infamous "lacking institutional control". This is the coach who tries to run a clean program and does not knowingly or tacitly condone corruption at any level. But at the same time this coach does not create a culture of rigid enforcement on his staff and in the organization. I could see an honest but young coach fall into this category. I would suspect this describes quite a few programs.

4. In corruptible -- Bill Self, Coach K, Jay Wright etc. These are coaches that have such job security and such personal commitment to doing it the right way and also have a strong cultural active leadership that has checks and balances and accountability to keep corruption from entering the system. I would like to think there are a number of these.

The world of college basketball is rife with bad actors and the main participants in the drama of college basketball are 16-19 year old often easily tempted and corruptible youth. Not to mention parents who are often low in the socioeconomic scale and thus subject to greater needs or desires that can fuel temptation. It is not enough to be personally committed to doing things on the up and up when you are the leader. You have to create a culture of compliance and build a system of active and effective accountability. From everything I know about Bill Self and KU, they do all of the above and are strongly committed to and effective at compliance and monitoring. Some have argued that this certainly cannot be the case given the plethora of issues surrounding the program over the last 5 years. While that argument may sound plausible to someone who does not want to put a little more thoughtful energy in, it is a vacuous argument unless it is accompanied by solid data. In the case of De Sousa and Preston the data we are supplied up to this point (including the FBI release) is that the bad actors were unknown (and arguably unknowable) to the KU system of checks and balances. Corruption is to human systems like water is to homes. No matter how hard you try to keep it out, it will somehow find a way in. (speaking as someone who over the years has had more than my share of water issues in my homes). I personally still have faith in Self and the KU administration. If you look at the risk factors that would enhance the motivation of succumbing to temptation to cheat, none exist in any measurable degree at Kansas. How do any of these stack up to Coach Self;

Fear of Job Security -- Next to Coach K maybe the most secure coach in college basketball.

Pride of needing (wanting) to win -- No coach in D1 lacks fire in the belly to win but Self has never, and I mean never shown a corruptible desire to win. In fact, there is great evidence that it is just the opposite, that he will sacrifice even winning for doing things the right way or his way.

Weak values -- Self??? Yah right???

Bad Judgment -- (say in hiring questionable characters) I have never seen anything to give that impression and lots of data to the opposite.

All in all, I like KU's chances of weathering this storm just fine and I am proud of our university and program.