College Basketball’s Silence Is Almost As Damning As the Crimes

As the most widespread point-shaving scandal in the history of college basketball simmered in plain sight for more than a year before boiling over Thursday, this was the general reaction from the leadership in the sport:

Shrugs. Silence. Casual indifference.

The National Association of Basketball Coaches likes to refer to itself and its membership of college coaches as the “Guardians of the Game.” Yet by all outward appearances, the NABC has stood by silently—no posts on its website regarding this open secret of an investigation, nothing on social media. The big-name coaches who are always ready to shout into an available microphone about the issues—transfer portal, NIL, eligibility rules, being big-footed by football—don’t seem to be moved to speak out on this one.

Self, Izzo, Calipari, Pitino, Hurley, Painter, Sampson, Few … hello? Power-conference athletic directors and commissioners? Prominent network analysts?

Anyone home? Anyone care?

Not many. Because the high-powered schools aren’t implicated. And if anything defines the current state of college athletics, it’s a profound lack of concern for the collective good, for anyone other than yourself, for anything beneath the biggest and richest programs. That mentality has killed conferences, led to cavalier postseason initiatives and endangered non-revenue sports—naturally, it has been applied here as well.

It’s frankly pathetic.

In a development everyone should have seen coming but few outside of NCAA headquarters bothered to worry about, the FBI dropped a stinking pile of corruption allegations on the doorstep of college basketball Thursday. It’s nasty stuff. A widespread undermining of the integrity of the sport. A deep stain, if anyone bothers to look in the mirror and acknowledge it.

According to the federal indictment released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, a point-shaving scheme that involved 39 players on 17 different teams attempted to fix 29 games in the 2023–24 and ’24–25 seasons. Twenty current and former players have been charged with crimes, in addition to other nefarious characters who masterminded the scheme and were also charged in an NBA scandal last year. Others cooperated with authorities and kept their names out of the indictments.

If you rolled up all the previous infamous point-shaving scandals in the history of college hoops—CCNY, Kentucky, Arizona State, Tulane, Boston College, Northwestern, etc.—it might not equal 17 affected schools. That’s 4.7% of Division I basketball programs. Games were allegedly fixed in 12 different states and involved teams from 11 different conferences, over the course of 11 months.

That’s a massive web of corruption. And rest assured, that’s not the entire scope of the scandal.

The NCAA—which has taken this issue far more seriously than any other college entity—has sanctioned many other players in recent months who were not charged in the indictment. Careers have ended. And there are plenty more ongoing gambling integrity cases NCAA Enforcement is aggressively pursuing.

But because North Carolina A&T had a player charged, and not North Carolina, few will react. Because Kennesaw State is in the crosshairs, not Kentucky, more shrugs will ensue. (The involvement of Big East member DePaul should at least resonate with some people.)

Even at the schools that were believed all along to be in the crosshairs of this investigation, there were a lot of people whistling past the graveyard. Three examples: I made calls in the last year pursuing credible information involving players at DePaul, Robert Morris and Buffalo. People at those schools denied knowing anything was afoot, which was either dishonest or willfully naive. Maybe they very much didn’t want to know what had happened on their campuses.

Here’s what the feds say was happening: Four DePaul players conspired to fix the first half of three different games in 2024, against Georgetown, Butler and St. John’s; three Robert Morris players conspired to dump the first half of games against Northern Kentucky and Purdue-Fort Wayne (the latter a Horizon League tournament game); and three Buffalo players conspired to dump first halves against Western Michigan, Kent State and Ohio.

Like the rest of the college sports machinery, everyone seemed willing to turn away from this unfolding scandal until the feds and the NCAA forced everyone to look.

It’s worth considering whether this scandal should be attributed, in part, to the mentality that gnaws at the foundation of an increasingly professionalized college sports world. Money is the driving factor in every decision being made at the leadership level; don’t think the athletes haven’t noticed. A lot of them are mimicking the behavior that is being modeled in front of them.

The revenue gap, and subsequent NIL differential, is sufficiently vast that the Have Nots were the natural (cynical) target in this scheme. Players at low-major schools playing for a scholarship—which, to be clear, is not nothing—watch high-major peers raking in cash and want some of their own. If you’re on a losing team and need money, here came some vipers to offer you a way to “earn” it.

The indictment says players generally were offered between $10,000 and $30,000 to tank a first half or an entire game. That’s a good amount for college-age young men, but it’s not really life-changing money. Meanwhile, the fixers were betting sums well into six figures on obscure contests, getting rich off the risks taken by those earning one-tenth of the payoff. It was quite the predatory operation.

In the end, a lot of people got nabbed and are likely to face jail time, with felonies on their lifetime records. It’s a tragic set of circumstances for young athletes who made terrible decisions—but that doesn’t excuse them from consequences.

Point-shaving scandals have been around forever, but the extent of this one underscores the risks that come with the proliferation of legalized gambling. Yes, a more regulated gambling industry actually helped lead to the point-shavers being caught, thanks to sophisticated monitoring of the sports wagering space. But the pervasiveness of gambling on campuses, and the ease of doing it by phone, has invited the foxes into the henhouse.

College sports, like its professional counterparts, was perfectly willing to partner with gambling companies—anything for more revenue, right? Here is what comes along with that. American sports leagues are unlikely to untie the knot with gambling outlets, but these concurrent basketball scandals at the NBA and college levels should force a reexamination of the entire arrangement. (That may already be occurring. NCAA president Charlie Baker and NBA commissioner Adam Silver met last week to discuss gambling-related issues.)

If you want to trust the integrity of the games you’re watching, which is the most important fundamental tenet of athletics, you should care about this scandal. Just because it hasn’t landed in the backyard of your favorite team—or that team’s hated rival—doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.

Believing that it will never happen at a big-brand, big-dollar school is foolish. In a separate scandal, Major League Baseball pitchers worth tens of millions of dollars were allegedly being compromised. In a related scandal, NBA player Terry Rozier, who has signed contracts worth well in excess of $100 million in his career, was allegedly compromised.

Part of the NCAA’s educational message on campuses regarding illegal gambling is not to be too sure your school is immune. It might only be a matter of time. Which is why it’s time for the putative leaders in college basketball to stop the shrugs and end the silence.

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