Bowen details college cash offers for son’s play

2:02 pm | October 4, 2018 | Go to Source | Author:

5:53 PM ET

Mark Schlabach
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ESPN Senior Writer
- Senior college football writer
- Author of seven books on college football
- Graduate of the University of Georgia
Jeff Borzello
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ESPN Staff Writer
- Basketball recruiting insider.
- Joined ESPN in 2014.
- Graduate of University of Delaware.

NEW YORK — Brian Bowen Sr., who is accused of agreeing to a pay-for-play scheme to receive $100,000 from Adidas to send his son to the University of Louisville, broke down during his testimony on Thursday in a federal criminal trial involving bribes and other corruption in college basketball.

Within the first 10 minutes on Bowen’s testimony, assistant U.S. attorney Edward Diskant asked him about his son, Brian Bowen II, who is also known affectionately as “Tugs.”

“Is Tugs presently in college?” Diskant asked.

“Uh, no, he’s not,” Bowen answered.

“Why isn’t he in college?” Diskant asked.

At that point, Bowen was overcome with emotion and started crying while sitting on the witness stand. He cried for a few minutes and breathed heavily into the microphone until Diskant asked U.S. District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan for a break. As jurors left the courtroom, Bowen turned from them and wiped his face with a tissue.

Brian Bowen II is currently playing professionally in Australia.

Shortly after Bowen Sr. returned to the stand about 20 minutes later, it wasn’t long before he’d accused a handful of colleges, including Arizona, Creighton, Oklahoma State and Texas, of offering him tens of thousands of dollars in cash and other improper benefits for his son to play basketball at those schools.

“Schools would give me money for a top player, like my son, to go to school,” Bowen Sr. said.

Bowen said Christian Dawkins, one of the three defendants in the criminal trial for felony wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, relayed the alleged offers from assistant coaches to him. Dawkins and Bowen grew up together in Saginaw, Michigan, and they’ve had a long friendship.

Adidas executive James Gatto and former Adidas consultant Merl Code are also defendants in the case and, along with Dawkins, are accused of conspiring to influence players to sign with Adidas-sponsored schools Kansas, Louisville, Miami and NC State. Each of the three men has pleaded not guilty.

According to Bowen Sr., Dawkins told him that Arizona assistant coach Joe Pasternack offered $50,000; Oklahoma State assistant coach Lamont Evans offered $150,000 cash, $8,000 for a car and additional money to buy a house; Texas assistant coach Mike Morrell offered to “help me with housing;” and Creighton assistant coach Preston Murphy offered $100,000 and a “good job, a lucrative job.”

Pasternack is now the head coach at UC Santa Barbara; Evans is one of three former assistant coaches who are charged in a separate federal case and is accused of accepting bribes from Dawkins and others to influence players to sign with certain agents and financial advisers; Morrell is now the head coach at UNC-Asheville; Murphy, a Saginaw native, is still employed at Creighton.

Regarding Oregon, which defense attorneys said in opening statements had offered an “astronomical amount of money” for Bowen, Bowen Sr. said, “I don’t recall that.”

Bowen said he talked to a couple of the coaches during his son’s recruitment, but not about the financial offers, which are a violation of NCAA rules.

Bowen Sr., a former Saginaw police officer, who appeared in court after the government offered him a non-prosecutorial agreement in exchange for his testimony, also detailed various payments made to him dating to his son’s high school career.

Bowen Sr. told the jury that he received $2,000 per month from Shane Heirman for Bowen Jr. to attend La Lumiere School in LaPorte, Indiana. Heirman was the head coach of La Lumiere at the time, and is now an assistant coach at DePaul.

Bowen Jr. began his high school career playing for Dawkins’ Dorian’s Pride AAU program, but moved to the Michigan Mustangs on the Adidas circuit after Adidas program director T.J. Gassnola offered Bowen Sr. $25,000 for his son to play for the Mustangs.

Diskant displayed transaction records showing two separate payments totaling $4,000 from Dawkins to Bowen Sr., as well as a check from Adidas executive Chris Rivers to Bowen Sr. for $2,000.

Bowen Sr. also testified he received money from Dawkins and Rivers in cash.

Bowen Jr. left the Mustangs for the Nike circuit, choosing to play for the Mean Streets program out of Chicago. Mean Streets offered Bowen Sr. between $5,000 to $8,000 for Bowen Jr. to play for them, Bowen Sr. told the jury, and he rejected an $18,000 offer from the Spiece AAU program out of Indiana.