If you have HBO, I have heard this is pretty good exposure of how dirty the recruiting game is. It’s available starting tomorrow.
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Thanks for the heads up; I have it set to record tomorrow.
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I taped it and just got thru watching it. All I can say is WOW! If what I saw is factual, and it surely appears so from the taped wiretaps, the FBI is more corrupt than I had previously thought. (I won’t go into my previous thoughts because it would invlove politics and the efforts to get Trump.) Their schemes are more Machiavellian than one could imagine.
Entrapment is their specialty by creating a scheme to force someone to do something tey didn’t want to do, and then arresting and charging them for it. Again, I could give recent examples from politics and would if it were allowed.
Of course the coaches targeted got away with everything, for an investigation that spent no telling how much money, but didn’t really do anything but frame a couple of people and make a young black guy the fall guy.
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Been happening since integration - just more sophisticated now
FBI been corrupt just now the mainstream is seeing it. I’m watching it today but can anybody tell me how Sean Miller and Will Wade came off?
After reading into it more I am far less excited to watch it. It was made to show Dawkins as the victim and to show how he was unfairly gone after when everybody else was doing the same thing. I guess it worked if you came out mad at the FBI.
I would just point out that it wasn’t some random guy they went after. He exposed himself to the FBI with a bunch of stupid things, the big one charging $42,000 in uber rides on an ASM client’s card which got him fired from there of course. I’ll watch the show to see his side of the story though.
Are you kidding? This has been going on since the beginning but now has gotten very sophisticated.
Just about every 5 star player had a pimp/agent even back in the ‘70s.
In the ‘50s and ‘60’s alums were still very involved in helping dear ol University!
Dawkins kept telling the FBI undercover guy that he didn’t want to get involved with bribing coaches and the FBI guy kept pushing for him to do so – all verified with FBI wiretaps supplied to attornies. Dawkins was all in for paying players, but not bribing coaches.
As for Wade and Miller, they are on tape talking about paying players. Wade was saying LSU could easily beat the NBA minimum salary. But this money was coming from elsewhere, not Dawkins or Wade. It seems that Nike and Adidas were footing the bill for paying the players.
Dawkins was trying to get them as clients so he could be their agent. It’s a whole messy thing, but the big fish were thrown back into the lake and the little fish thrown into the pan.
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The FBI was so far off thinking paying coaches was the problem. If they went after the agents and AAU programs it might have cleaned up things just a little., but like Hawkins said in the doc Cleveland St would have gotten the hammer dropped on them just to teach Ohio St or insert any other big name program a lesson.
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I just watched this documentary, and it was so damaging to the FBI because they were so incompetent with their entrapment scheme.
If you like the FBI and think colleges and their coaches are honest people and are not paying these big time college prospects, you should not watch this documentary. Keep living with your blinders on.
To me, Dawkins was telling the truth because much of what he was saying was wiretapped and filmed by the FBI.
Dawkins was guilty of paying players like most colleges do trying to get 5 star athletes but the FBI couldn’t do anything about that.
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If a basketball player is worth $100K-$200K, I wonder what’s the going rate for a college football player?
For 98% of them, not as much. Very few, if any, can turn around a football team like one BB player can do. One, you make an impact…two or more, sweet 16 and above, along with the monetary awards that come with tournament success.
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With the coming of athletes being able to profit off their NIL, the athletes might make more with several advertising offers if the NCAA doesn’t put a cap on it. Of course that would only be for a few athletes.
A star QB is worth more but the street committee tells me a five star has plenty of value.
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Just watched the documentary. Meh, it’s alright. Best part is the last 15-30 mins when they really break down all the cheating and how ridiculous things are. I especially loved Wetzel’s comparisons to other industries and companies like Google recruiting top high school students and getting praised for it. Also liked the way they presented the phone taps on Sean Miller and Will Wade. Still can’t believe those guys have jobs after all this. Great quote from Dawkins at the end: “the moral of the story is F*** the NCAA.”
Wasn’t big on them trying to make Dawkins look like a victim. He was a dummy and his greed was the reason he got convicted. Sure, he is a small fish but those are the guys who always take the fall (welcome to America!). He had the chance to get off free if he flipped as an informant. I suppose there are arguments for both sides as to what is the decision he should have made. The big question now are these convictions precedent for charging future people? Because before this, there was nothing illegal about paying players. Of course the big flaw is still that the universities are the victims, lol.
On a side note, after watching this and the McMillions documentary, I guess the standards are not that high to become an FBI agent. The McMillions guy was just a clown and this case got wrecked by the main undercover stealing money from them.
FWCoog,
Why would you say he was a dummy? I agree his greed made him look past the red flags that kept popping up but it seemed he was smart enough to keep the FBI’s money in his house and used it for his defense attorney.
Because he has enough experience in the business to know something wasn’t legit. He even mentioned thinking it might be mafia money or something. I was saying he was a dummy for falling into the trap. Seems pretty smart overall, but getting convicted was 100% on him.