NCAA in a nutshell: Bill Self, Kansas win national title with infractions case still pending

NCAA president Mark Emmert was standing on a celebratory stage about to announce the presentation of the national championship trophy. Just a few feet away was Bill Self, coach of the Kansas program the NCAA has charged with five Level I violations that were labeled “egregious” and “severe.”

This was undeniably awkward — two sides of an intense infractions case — and that was before Emmert began stumbling out the words.

“Here to present the championship trophy … to Coach Self and the Kansas City Jayhawks,” Emmert said.

The NCAA president quickly corrected himself — “The University of Kansas Jayhawks” — but his nervousness was clear.

Public opinion has softened dramatically on NCAA cases of late. Under current name, image and likeness rules, many of KU’s alleged transgressions might be legal. But there are still flickering moments of the sport trying to police recruiting violations, and due to the NCAA’s glacially slow infractions process, the accusations are front and center on the game’s biggest night. This case started in September of 2017, when the FBI arrested 10 men in a widespread scheme to "defraud" college hoops.

In that way, the NCAA has no one to blame but itself. The case involves no current Jayhawk players, so the 2022 national championship trophy is not in danger of being vacated. But this should have been handled far earlier, if just for the optics.

“I believe we are getting closer,” Self said the day before KU’s dramatic, come-from-behind 72-69 title-game victory. “I believe we’re getting closer. And I know that no one probably from any party has wanted this to go as long as it has. But I do believe that the end is soon."

Meanwhile, two of Kansas’ old recruiting bagmen from Adidas — Jim Gatto and Merl Code — woke up Monday in federal prison, serving out sentences for, in part, providing former Jayhawk recruits and their families money as an inducement to play in Lawrence.

A third old confidant, T.J. Gassnola, is a convicted felon who avoided lock up only because he agreed to serve as the star witness against the other two.

Self is still coaching, of course. KU has claimed to be an unwitting victim of Adidas, even pathetically trying to get $1.1 million in restitution from Gatto. It also re-signed a long-term deal with Adidas and gave its coach a lifetime contract.

This was not mentioned during “One Shining Moment.”

You could say Kansas should be embarrassed but this is college basketball.

KU’s opponent, UNC, had a disproportionate number of athletes take no-show, no-work academic classes for over a decade. Yet when the details emerged, the NCAA said it wasn’t under its enforcement purview. As such, no punishment. Not actually educating student-athletes seems more bothersome than side money to a recruit’s family.

For years, Gatto and Gassnola worked for Adidas and did everything it could to stock Kansas' roster because it was the shoe company’s flagship program. (KU has been with the company since 2005 and its current $196 million deal runs through 2031.) Code joined the final few years.

Getting favored programs championship-level talent is how Adidas protected its investment. Nike, Under Armour and others have long been accused of doing the same thing.

Blue blood is basically a code phrase for green cash.

The FBI and the Southern District of New York decided to make this a federal offense. The legal theory was that Gatto et al. somehow “defrauded” Kansas by getting it the very star players Self and his staff wanted and often openly discussed with them.

The feds' case was ridiculous to anyone who knew anything about how college basketball actually works. That previously law-abiding people went to prison for this made it worse. Essentially Gatto and Code are in prison not for stealing money from anyone, but giving people money.

"The basketball coaching staffs want assistance," Gassnola testified in 2018, describing various college coaches who would beg for Adidas’ help. It was all part of the business.

“I’m happy with Adidas,” Self wrote to Gassnola in a text message. “Just got to get a couple of real guys.”

“In my mind, it’s KU, Bill Self,” Gassnola wrote back, noting the pecking order of Kansas in front of other prominent Adidas programs such as Louisville and N.C. State that they were helping. “Everyone else fall into line …”

“That['s] how [it] works at UNC and Duke,” Self texted, referring to how he believed Nike took care of its top programs.

UNC beat Duke on Saturday to reach the final.

It’s part of the reason KU wasn’t quick with an apology. Sure, Gassnola detailed in court that he provided $89,000 to the mother of former recruit/player Billy Preston, including a $30,000 brick in a New York hotel room. But he also dropped $40,000 in cash for an N.C. State recruit and stuffed $7,000 in a magazine for a dad of a Louisville prospect.

And the $20,000 he said he gave the handler of former KU player Silvio De Sousa — “light work,” Gassnola described it to Self in a text — that was allegedly only to get the then-recruit out of another alleged shoe company-funded deal and a commitment to Maryland.

Sometimes the payouts didn’t work. Gassnola testified that he gave $15,000 to people around then-recruit Deandre Ayton only to have Ayton sign with Arizona.

"Did you feel you let Coach Self down when Deandre Ayton did not go to the University of Kansas," Gatto’s defense attorney asked.

"I did," Gassnola stated.

Or consider the FBI-recorded phone call where Code detailed to Kansas assistant Kurtis Townsend what the father of then-recruit Zion Williamson was “asking for” — namely a job plus “cash in the pocket” and “housing for him and his family.” Townsend responded: “If that’s what it takes to get him here for 10 months, we’re going to have to do it some way.”

Yet Zion didn’t play at KU. He started at Duke.

So Kansas is what college basketball long ago became. This is a throwback scandal to when such activity was truly against NCAA rules.

KU’s defense remains eye-rolling. It is claiming naive innocence and playing “victim.”

In real life these people at KU — certainly not Self — are not that dumb. They all knew what Adidas was about. Almost everyone in college basketball did. Coaches used to beg Gatto et al. for help, hug them and treat them like the kingmakers they were.

Who did Self have dinner with the night before he was enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame? Gassnola, the self-described “Adidas bagman,” who one KU associate athletic director compared to “Lucky Luciano.” Another described him as “Tony Soprano.”

This case should have been streamlined. The FBI laid out the facts of the payments, which Gassnola admitted under oath during two days of testimony in 2018. You either believe Self and his staff thought “help” was nothing more sinister than putting in a good word or you don’t.

Yet here we are, the NCAA’s incompetence dragging out a case so long that the broken rules kind of aren’t even rules, the bagmen are behind bars and Mark Emmert is congratulating the Kansas City Jayhawks.

Absurd. Awkward. And, in its own way, perfectly college basketball.