FBI's College Basketball Investigation: Charges Dropped Against Brad Augustine

[Washington Post] – When federal prosecutors announced last September the arrests of 10 men as part of an FBI investigation into the college basketball black market, one of the central figures was Brad Augustine, an Orlando-area youth basketball program director accused of negotiating deals to steer his best players to preferred colleges, for a price.

But in February, prosecutors dropped all charges against Augustine, without explanation. Two weeks ago, in a court hearing in New York, one of the lawyers on the case offered a possible reason: After his arrest, Augustine apparently told federal prosecutors he never intended to pay the players and their families, and had kept the little money actually paid out in these deals for himself.

After the Yahoo! and ESPN reports came out in early March, everyone thought we were heading to a doomsday of sorts for college basketball. It was finally the time where the bombshell dropped and we found out what players, programs, coaches, etc were all going to be punished. Except that never happened. In fact, once the Tournament got started everyone just talked about the games, it was actually quite perfect. The only time the investigation really got brought up it felt like was in the Final Four, where people wanted to call it ‘the clean Final Four’ with the likes of Loyola, Michigan and Villanova reaching San Antonio.

But, news did come out and it’s rather significant and incredibly fucked up. Brad Augustine, the former director of the 1-Family AAU program in Florida had all charges dropped against him. So what’s the fucked up part? They were dropped because he admitted he was going to keep the money for himself. That’s right. In the eyes of the law, etc, it’s not wrong for Augustine or someone else in that sort of power to take money, direct players towards the person who gave them said money and just pocket it all. Augustine’s claim was he only planned on defrauding Adidas executive Jim Gatto when Augustine was reportedly given $150,000 to sway a player to a specific school.

That’s right. If Augustine were to give players money that people are paying SPECIFICALLY for their services it would be illegal and cause those players eligibility at the NCAA level. You know, receiving a sponsorship, because that’s what the market determines these guys are worth would be the bigger crime than Brad Augustine keeping over $150,000 for himself and lying to kids and their families. It’s one of the most fucked up things out there.

This is the exact reason why I’ve been saying my only hope with this investigation is it blows up the NCAA. I don’t care about punishments – in fact none of these players should be punished. They are taking money they rightfully deserve based on what market value dictates for them. Hell, it’s why at the 3×3 last week I was helping run, every single player talked about getting money back from the NCAA by winning games. Every. Single. Player. I love college basketball, but it’s beyond flawed. This is showing just that.

This is also why I think we’re not going to see a whole lot of fallout from this investigation. We’re not going to see death penalties. We’re not going to see  100 programs get sanctions. We’re going to see reports and rumors, but in the end it’s going to be a lot of silence from these guys. Remember, no one has to talk to the NCAA – the FBI included. Do you really trust the NCAA to do a correct investigation?