Merl Code explains how coaches were involved in the college basketball bribery case | College Football Enquirer

Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel and Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde are joined by Merl Code, a defendant in the FBI investigation into corruption in college basketball. Code explains how coaches were involved in the process, and questions the process that led to his fraud conviction.

Video Transcript

DAN WETZEL: So you established a relationship with the players. And you're sponsoring their AAU team. Like you said, maybe you're helping mom and dad out with a hotel room, some meals on the road, some gas money. I've seen all the different stuff, right? You're trying to become friends.

I think one of the key points in this entire case that I wrote over and over is the people-- you, Christian, Jim Gatto, the defendants in the bribery and the fraud case-- you were giving people money. Nobody took money from anybody. You gave people money. You gave contracts.

You are not-- the person that set them all up, Marty Blazer, was a terrible financial advisor who stole money. He stole $2.5 million. These guys are giving out $1,000 here, a Holiday Inn room there, things like that. You gave people money, and you're in trouble.

But it is common for college coaches to be calling, texting, begging for help-- everything, right? I mean, it is common for coaches to have looked at you and said, this guy knows players. Can you help me, Merl? How many times did you hear that?

MERL CODE: That was a reoccurring theme over my 15-plus years in the business. It was a re-- I mean, it stretched from, hey, man, can you put a kid that's already committed to us in a hotel room with a kid that we're trying to get? And that way, I can show up at his hotel room like I'm visiting the kid that's already committed, so I can recruit the kid that we want to get-- to hey, man, I've got this booster who's going to get this-- who's going to get their family a house. I've got-- so again, man, this is not-- this is not an uncommon practice.

Because you know, you get to a place where you start understanding, first of all, this is not an amateur sport. It's not. And the government continues to allow the NCAA to operate under this facade.

You can't have $550 million of big coaching money floating around, and call this an amateur sport. There are guys who are not coaching who are being paid to the rate of half a billion dollars. You can't build $200 million of football and basketball facilities on campuses and say this is amateur sports-- you can't.

Amateur sports is when you are watching cars, having raffles and hot dog plates so you can order a uniform, and have enough money and gas for the bus trip to your game. That's amateur sports. But they continue to allow them to operate under this facade.

And again, it's this NIL-- I'm sure we'll get to that in a second. But this NIL is a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. And excuse my language, but it's BS.

PAT FORDE: He's quoting from the book there. I mean, to be clear-- and that's one thing this book does, is pull back the curtain most of the way-- is that if anyone thinks there is such a thing as a clean big-time program, they need to wake up and smell the donkey-[BLEEP]. Somewhere along the line, even the so-called cleanest programs has some dirt if you look close enough. So that's the way business gets done.

Why-- I mean, I guess why did it take two decades' worth of this stuff for this federal scandal to finally blow the lid off-- well, kind of blow the lid off things, although not really-- for this all to become this public, and then eventually, for it to reach a point of having name, image, and likeness? I mean, you got a-- an excerpt in the book there, Merl, about Anthony Davis getting $10,000 from you to his family because they were in hard times. But it was for a T-shirt that would be perfectly legal today. I guess I'm interested in your thoughts on how this thing has evolved.

MERL CODE: Well, again, it's-- and I mentioned the whole Norby Walters situation back in the '80s. It wasn't a crime for him, but it's a crime for me. And so it's an interesting take.

But blow the doors off the lid is really a-- it's funny to me, because again, they thought they were going to have all these high-profile names, and hauling all these guys off. And then everybody's like, listen, man, I'm not-- I'm not doing that all. What are you looking for? What are you trying to accomplish?

Because there's no federal legislation that says you can't give a kid money. There's none. Because if that was the case, and you had a son in college, and you gave him money, you'd be breaking federal law. It's ridiculous. And so you come up with these-- you have to make it fit into something. And it just-- it doesn't fit.

But again, when you can manipulate the system-- and these judges and these young prosecutors have similar backgrounds in terms of their Harvard and Yale backgrounds, and they want to see these young guys and young women succeed-- then, again, you don't mean anything. The truth doesn't mean anything. And that's the part that was really frustrating for me going through the process, is wait a minute, man. You won't allow the truth to be viewed in plain light.

And then, you know, no disrespect to what you guys do, but the media jumped on this and turned me into the most villainous character to ever step on the face of the Earth. And I became-- and I say it in the book, I wasn't just toxic, I was radioactive in terms of how I was viewed.

And I know the good I've done in this [INAUDIBLE]. And I know the people that I've touched, and tried to assist and help. But I'm not going to get on a soapbox about that. It's just it's interesting now that no federal legislation has been passed. But now, all of a sudden, the same thing that we did is now allowed.

So no law has-- no law has changed. But I'm going to prison, and what we did is now legal, so to speak. But there's been no law to change anything. So how was it then illegal in the first place?