Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby: NCAA investigation 'can't begin' until after criminal trials end
KANSAS CITY — We could be waiting a while for an NCAA investigation into the alleged corruption in college basketball.
Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said Wednesday that he doesn’t expect any NCAA action to take place before the criminal trials regarding the FBI’s investigation into pay-for-play allegations in the sport conclude. While the first trial — involving wire-fraud charges against Adidas executives — is in the midst of jury deliberations, there are two more federal trials yet to come. And both are set to start in 2019.
“What gets said around court cases, what gets reported around court cases is not necessarily gospel,” Bowlsby said at Big 12 media day when asked about the evidence that’s been shared during the first trial. “There will be a subsequent process that involves the NCAA and it’s at that point that the conference will get involved. The conference and the NCAA have intentionally deferred to the federal government process. Until that process is complete, we can’t begin down the path of that linear process.”
Bowlsby’s gospel comments came shortly after he said “we don’t have any more information that you have” when asked about the trial that has included references to Big 12 schools Kansas and Oklahoma State.
“The NCAA has intentionally stayed out of the way in deference to the federal process and that’s the way it ought to be,” he said.
In the trial against Adidas execs Jim Gatto and Merl Code and middleman Christian Dawkins, AAU team owner and Adidas staffer TJ Gassnola detailed payments totaling almost $90,000 made to the mother of former Kansas player Billy Preston. Well, Preston was supposed to be a Kansas player. He never played for the team after he curb-hopped a Dodge Charger that was found to be registered to his deceased grandmother.
The father of former Louisville commit Brian Bowen testified that Dawkins told him Oklahoma State would be willing to pay $150,000 plus car and housing allowances for Bowen to come to Stillwater.
While Gassnola said he never directly told Kansas coach Bill Self of the payments, Gatto’s attorney asked to enter texts between Gassnola and Self and Gassnola and Kansas assistant coach Kurtis Townsend as evidence. The texts, Gatto’s attorney said, showed Kansas knew that Gassnola was making payments to secure the services of Silvio De Sousa.
When asked about what had been revealed at the trial about Kansas, Bowlsby said he’d react when the allegations “become matters of fact.”
“At this point, they are not that,” he added.
In August, the NCAA announced an overhauled enforcement structure that allows those investigating NCAA cases to accept information from criminal proceedings. But if the NCAA is waiting for the federal trials to run their course before taking action, that overhauled system isn’t going to get its first significant test for months.
“There’s a new enforcement process that’s in place but it’s very much in its embryonic stages,” Bowlsby said. “It takes a while to transition from what we’ve been doing to what we’re going to do in the future. But the significant aspect of that is the changes that have already been made have allowed for the use of information from other proceedings. Previously that has not been the case. I think that alone makes this a different environment. The fact that they’re willing now to use *documented facts* from other proceedings, whether it be a court proceeding or some other investigation, I think gives the enforcement folks another tool.”
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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.
Follow @NickBromberg on Twitter
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