NCAA March Madness -- and we ain't talking brackets

March, 2019. As NCAA college basketball programs, fantasy sports websites, casinos and gamblers worldwide prepared for the college basketball tournament some marketing genius long ago dubbed "March Madness," a different madness bombarded the consciousness of many, in the form of indictments, sentencing, and the details of a wide-ranging FBI probe that followed. The big story involved one hundred people, maybe more, who were indicted for scheming to fix college admissions with athletic-based admissions to schools such as Yale, USC and Georgetown. What caught the world's attention, however, was that the scheme did not involve athletes. The swindle was not for the benefit of the skilled athletes who have long gotten preferential treatment due to the money they bring to institutions of "higher learning," but rather for the benefit of a host of non-athletes who cruised into colleges despite lacking academic credentials or athletic prowess. It turns out that a college admissions "consultant," had set up a network of college coaches who would pretend that the offspring of the wealthy were on their division 1 teams and shoehorn their admission into their universities, without ever requiring them to suit up or play, and despite no athletic success on any prior level. The parents paid hundreds of thousands, and in a few cases millions. The coaches pocketed huge dollars, and had no qualms because, apparently, it did not affect their teams, just the academic side of the schools with respect to which they had no concern. The scheme went as far as to use modern day cut and paste technology, to superimpose the heads of the faux athletes onto the bodies of true competitors to make them look athletic. Apparently, nobody from admissions ever met or greeted the students when they actually arrived on campus. "Hello, Suzy, I'm Mr. Gristle from admissions. I must say you don't look like your picture." "Yes, sir. I stopped taking those steroids after junior year, and my body just shrank right up." In actuality, if any interaction had occurred, several of the involved students would have been very confused. Most stories seem to indicate that the bribing parents did not inform the kids, letting them believe they had been admitted based on merit. "Hello, Dave. We're looking forward to you helping the swim team win nationals this year." "I'm sorry, Ma'am. I am not sure what you are talking about. I'm allergic to chlorine, and deathly afraid of water." Yet, the absurdity of the ease with which the scheme was implemented, and the degree to which it relied on the uninvolvement of the admissions offices, is only one of the strange ripples from the news. Lost in the blistering media coverage of the probe was a related story that broke at virtually the same time. In that case, two Adidas employees and a sports agent found out their punishment (a few measly months in prison) for having been convicted of paying high school student athletes and their parents in order to influence where the athletes chose to go to college. Although a more typical yawner example of the big business of college athletics, that case spawned an interesting example of strange double think. In that the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York described the case as one of fraud against the universities, and whined how it capsized the lives of the athletes affected, despite the fact that the plan involved several coaches and, of course, the athletes or their parents received the cash. Were the universities the victims or the benefactors? I guess it's a "New York" thing. It is true that the sports involved in the fake-student athlete debacle were the so-called "lesser sports" - water polo, tennis, sailing, rowing, volleyball and soccer, while the pay-the-players-scams involved the major sports of basketball and football. Yet, one has to wonder if the same universities were involved. Did the tennis coach sell admissions to the lazy wannabe nonstudent from Bel-Air, in order to raise the cash to induce the inner-city stud to come to the basketball program? The mind boggles. One can almost visualize the trading took place in the coaches lounge. "Do you have any open swimmer slots we can sell to get that wide receiver from AllWorld High?" "Nope, but I have an open table tennis slot. Perhaps we can bundle it with a yachting slot, toss in a lacrosse midfielder, and sell it on EBay?" Which does raise the other issue. How can so many things be sold, without Amazon being involved? The juxtaposition of the two cases also highlights the strangeness that is the American legal system. The Adidas case epitomizes the college sports system's dependence on the ability of universities with multimillion-dollar endowments well-heeled alums and supporters and huge network television contracts, to use unpaid athletic labor from, primarily, the lesser affluent. It thrusts the spotlight once again on our legal system, which allows those schools and their NCAA "governing body" to prevent the athletes on whose backs they surf, from benefitting from the multimillion-dollar industry to even some degree monetarily. Conversely, the bribery scandal shows the other side of the coin. It involves the super-rich, who paid ridiculous sums to induce myopic coaches of non-revenue sports to use up admissions slots tagged for the benefit of sportsmen and women, from nonrevenue generating sports people who could use the education and related "step up" their skills entitled them to receive. In time, the scandals will disappear from our newsfeeds and chat pages, and everyone will settle back to watch the field of 64 play its way down to the basketball world championship. By the time the victor is crowned, nobody will be wondering how much the high scorer was paid to attend his school or how many of the student boosters were scammed in by their parents. Instead, we will all be wondering why we did not expect the 14th seed to upset the number 2, and where Donald from down the hall disappeared to with our bracket-pool winnings. After all, this is America and we have our priorities. ----- ©2019 under analysis distribution, LLC. Under analysis is a syndicated column of the Levison Group. Charles Kramer is a principal of the St Louis based law firm Riezman Berger, P.C. comments or criticisms about this column may be sent to the Levison Group and the offer at comments@levisongroup.com or c/o this publication. Published: Fri, Mar 22, 2019