As Nike trial looms, we’re nearly to the next chapter in college hoops scandal

We will begin with the optimistic view of the next trial set to rock college basketball, but maybe we should first pause to define optimism. Because there are no purely positive outcomes left. The sport has been stained in a new way. That’s not coming back.

My desire all along has been for the most dishonest structure in any major American sport to catch some religion. For far too long the NCAA has pushed fiction and made billions because of a willing naivete from fans, media, and customers.

The cracks began to appear through last year’s Adidas trial in New York. An FBI investigation essentially found what everyone in the sport has known forever: Top basketball talents, prohibited by rule from being paid even a fraction of their value by schools, are often bought and influenced by such third parties as shoe companies, agents and financial advisors.

The trial kick-started some NCAA investigations, including at Kansas.

“That’s the NCAA doing what they have to do,” said one longtime Division I coach. “Adidas came first and they should all be looked into. But now when Nike’s on trial, what is the NCAA willing to do when they find out everybody’s doing the same thing? How do you go after everybody?”

So, the optimistic outcome here — my optimistic outcome, anyway — is that enough evidence shows enough programs and enough shoe companies and enough agents violating enough antiquated rules that the NCAA is publicly pressured into modernizing the system into something more sustainable and honest.

I don’t know exactly what that is, but possibilities abound. Let athletes profit off their likeness, even if schools (fairly, I would argue) get a cut. Or instead of salaries, let athletes “earn” money based on talent and academic progress. The cash can be accessed after college.

Or stop the demonizing of agents and shoe companies and recognize them for what they truly are: integral parts of the ecosystem with a vested financial and professional interest in prospects turning into successful pros.

Let those prospects take no-risk loans — paid off upon entering the NBA, or forgiven if a pro career doesn’t take. That would transfer the risk from teenagers to adults, and allow those who are already working in this space to more freely and honestly invest in legitimate businesses.

Anyway. That’s the optimistic view.

Here’s the pessimism:

“There’s no proof,” the same coach said. “As much as you and I and anyone else might know this stuff happens there’s no definitive proof with anything on Adidas and there won’t be definitive proof that Nike did anything. I’m telling you right now: Nike is much smarter than Adidas, so there won’t be even as much proof on them as there was on Adidas.”

In other words: it’s not what you think, or even what you might know. It’s what you can prove, and a notable example exists in the most potentially explosive bit from the Adidas trial.

This is the moment that’s been short-handed to the Zion wire tap. It was a conversation between longtime Kansas assistant coach Kurtis Townsend and then-Adidas consultant Merl Code, who told Townsend that Zion Williamson’s father was looking for a job, money, and housing.

Townsend’s response: “I’ve got to just try to work and figure out a way. Because if that’s what it takes to get him for 10 months, we’re going to have to do it some way.”