The FBI arrested assistant basketball coaches at four NCAA Division I universities — Arizona, Oklahoma State, Southern California, and Auburn — overnight on charges of taking cash bribes "to deliver star athletes to a financial adviser or an agent," NBC News reports. Six other people were also charged, including a senior executive at Adidas, managers, and financial advisers.
One of the coaches, Chuck Person of Auburn University, played for 13 years in the NBA. Person stands accused of accepting approximately $50,000 "in return for his agreeing to direct certain of the school's players to [a particular] adviser when they entered the NBA," The New York Times reports. The adviser, who is unnamed in the complaint, is reportedly cooperating with the government.
Lamont Evans of Oklahoma State, Emanuel Richardson of Arizona, and Tony Bland of USC are also accused of accepting money to funnel certain players to specific agents. "Many … coaches have enormous influence over the student-athletes who play for them, in particular with respect to guiding those student-athletes through the process of selecting agents and other advisers when they prepare to leave college and enter the NBA," the complaint said, as reported by ESPN. "The investigation has revealed several instances in which coaches have exercised that influence by steering players and their families to retain particular advisers, not because of the merits of those advisers, but because the coaches were being bribed by the advisers to do so."
Additionally, Adidas' head of global sports marketing, James Gatto, stands accused of paying $100,000 to a family to send their son to what details indicate was the University of Louisville. The indictment "says contemporary news accounts described [the player's] college decision, announced this past June, as a surprise" and that "this summer, Louisville signed a 10-year, $160 million apparel contract with Adidas," the Times writes.