paying players to play, like SMU paid Dickerson???
burn them like SMU
I find it hard to believe one runner, for one pretty low level agent brokered two (that we know of) $100,000 deals, and that's it.
No matter where this portion of the story ends, if anyone feels good that they have no players with agent ties, that's naive.
If the worst that comes out of this for MSU is that an agent paid a player's mom a few hundred dollars, I guess that's not horrible. I assumed most players got that, and I assume that is just the tip for MSU. I imagine most people don't expense a couple hundred dollars. Hell, I can say with 100% confidence that a family friend who was a backup (on scholarship, in the two deep, but not a starter) football player at a Big Ten school would find gift cards anonomously left in his locker on a fairly regular basis. $25 here, $100 there.
So it's not $400 to Bridges mom that makes me nervous, it's that I have a hard time believing this one runner for this one agent was the only guy brokering 6 figure deals. Hell, look at ASMs client list, it's not exactly filled with top flight players. Hence the initial attempt to trade Bowen for assurances that former players would sign with ASM, before bailing on that and just selling him to Louisville.
As an aside, I generally don't like handlers, but more and more kids have them. If MSU or Indiana had said, ok, well talk to Gary Harris or Victor Oladipo to get them to sign with you, and Bowen had gone to MSU or IU, is that a violation? No money exchange, and basically just an agreement for a former player, now in the NBA, to switch agents? I honestly don't know.
