The ongoing college basketball recruiting scandal reached a turning point on Wednesday after an NCAA commission led by Condoleezza Rice laid out a series of a series of potential reforms to avoid future incidents of bribery and other types of corruption amongst coaches, agents and sponsors.
NCAA Basketball Commission Proposes New Reforms
“The corruption we observed in college basketball has its roots in youth basketball,” said Rice, a former Secretary of State.
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Among the most outstanding proposed reforms is one that hopes to end the “one-and-done” rule. This stipulation requires that all basketball players must play at least one full year of college before declaring for the NBA. Several prominent NBA stars, including LeBron James, have said they are opposed to the rule.
The NCAA commission also suggested permitting regulated communication with agents so that they do not try to steer players toward certain college programs and sponsors, as revelations in recent months have shown. Adidas is one of the companies that has become embroiled in the scandal.
The report the panel led by Rice released also included proposals to change the system related to sanctions, as well as summer basketball programs, and demanded sports apparel firms take on greater “transparency and accountability.”
“The levels of corruption and deception are now at a point that they threaten the very survival of the college game as we know it. It has taken some time to get here, and it will take time to change course,” read the report, per the New York Times.
The commission reportedly has not offered any ideas on what to replace the highly-debated one-and-done rule with.
According to several reports, the punishments for recruiting violations could potentially include year-long bans on allowing players to visit, while other infractions could lead to even bigger sanctions like five-year postseason bans and possible loss of postseason revenue sharing.
The commission has also pushed for the NCAA to revamp summer basketball programs, which are key to the recruitment process, so as to exclude involvement from the top three sports apparel giants: Adidas, UnderArmour, and Nike.
Multiple prospects of universities whom Adidas sponsored, like Kansas, Louisville and Miami, were found to have been bribed (along with their families) in an effort to convince them to commit to those schools. These revelations led to indictments from federal prosecutors after a lengthy FBI investigation.
The commission also counts former NBA stars like Grant Hill and David Robinson, as well as former coaches, college presidents and USA Basketball executives, among its members.
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Rice also hinted she would support the idea of giving college athletes a cut of any type of commercial use of their names and photos, according to the Times.
NCAA president Mark Emmert has said college basketball is broken and is in need of major changes.
In other related news, the NCAA is facing a federal antitrust lawsuit. Jeffrey Kessler, a New York lawyer, sued the association in August 2014, claiming the NCAA and its partners have violated antitrust regulations by restricting how basketball and football players are compensated. The case is being determined in California.
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