And for the unseemly side of basketball. The NCAA investigation news

Here is a link to the latest info. www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id...all-infraction-cases

I wonder if this will have any impact:

www.yardbarker.com/nba/articles/zion_wil...star/s1_127_32160932

Zion Williamson has been accused of accepting illegal benefits while at Duke, and the latest court documents filed by his former agent claim the life of luxury Williamson’s parents were living during the New Orleans Pelicans star’s lone season with the Blue Devils is proof of that.

Ford is still trying to make the case that Williamson and Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski should be forced to answer questions under oath. In Ford’s latest filing, she cited the fact that Williamson’s parents went from paying less than $900 a month in rent before Zion arrived at Duke to living in a $950,000 house that cost nearly $5,000 per month while Williamson was playing for the Blue Devils.

Some more context on a Coach Townsend text. I wonder if the NCAA will go after Duke using the information from a lawsuit.

thespun.com/acc/duke-blue-devils/zion-wi...tm_campaign=CFB051am

FINALLY this is coming out. I've been saying this all along. Townsend says that he'll have to "figure out a way" and he apparently didn't figure it out. So to me, that's no violation.

Meanwhile, it looks a whole lot like Duke "figured out a way".

It will be interesting to watch this but I'm still not confident that the NCAA won't bungle this somehow where Duke will come out smelling like a rose, and KU will get the truckload of fertilizer dumped on it.

I'm not concerned with Duke now, but more so about KU and this quote. All I heard before was Townsend said something less specific or damning than what I just read. What is in the lawsuit shown in this article sure sounds a heck of a lot more like agreeing to make it happen, even though he might not have ultimately done so, or Zion chose Duke anyway. It sure doesn't sound as innocent to me.

to be more specific, the only sentence I've seen up to now was the "I've got to figure out a way."

I've never seen the next sentence saying "if that's what it takes to get him we're going to HAVE TO DO IT".

Maybe I missed that before, but that sounds really bad to me.

Ok, but let's add some context. The next day, Townsend gets on the phone but it's not recorded and says, "hey, we really want Zion but I can't give him what you're asking me, so instead, would he be swayed if we offered him a corner locker in the locker room?"

Clearly an exaggeration, but SAYING something and DOING it are entirely different things. In fact, in the strictest terms, Townsend doesn't even make an agreement to do anything. "We're going to have to do it" isn't the same as "Tell Zion that we'll do it."

In other words, Townsend says to Grassiola: "if we want him, we're going to have to do it." Then Townsend goes into Self's office and says, "hey Coach, we're going to have to do it (money, jobs, housing etc.) if we want to land Zion." Self replies, "you know we can't do that Curtis, quit joking around."

If this were a courtroom and "doing it" was the crime, you'd first need to prove that a crime was committed. The bank was robbed and the money was taken. In this case, the bank wasn't robbed. The outcome (stealing the money or landing Zion in Lawrence) didn't happen. You can TALK about robbing a bank all day and it's not illegal until you attempt to rob it.

In this case, not only can we definitively prove that Zion DIDN'T attend KU, it's not even enough to prove that a conspiracy to land him illegally took place. Yes, they talked about what it would take, but if you can't produce evidence that Townsend took any other actions toward that end, or discussed getting the money/job/housing lined up with somebody else, there's no case.

Show me the wiretap where Townsend picked up the phone and tried to arrange the things Zion was asking for, and maybe you have the beginnings of a conspiracy case. But even that's a stretch.

Of course, the huge exception here is that this isn't being tried in court, so the standard rules of evidence and burden of proof are whatever the NCAA says they are.

Boy Not O, I sure want to accept what you lay out. You did an excellent job of defining "mens rea" behind committing a crime, noting it could be conspiracy to commit, but not enough proof of intent or overt actions to convict for the crime itself.

It's your last sentence that I'm afraid is our bugaboo.

We're never going to rid ourselves of being the biggest whale in the Adidas roster of programs. And Adidas created the world of paying athletes. Someone has to pay, and it sure looks like NCAA has selected KU.

Thanks AZ. I'm no lawyer, but I was pretty good on the high school debate team, lol.

Sadly we're in agreement that the NCAA needs a pelt and they want ours.

So while I'll always retain some hope that we'll prevail (or at least expose the NCAA and force change there), the reality is that the odds are stacked very much against us.