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You'll want to take a shower after reading this.
Meet the Bag Man: How to buy college football players
Meet the Bag Man: How to buy college football players
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In a world of supposedly amateur sports, as college is supposed to be, this is obviously less than ideal -- but hardly surprising, and probably much more widespread than SEC football. Sure, SEC country has an extraordinary passion for college football (and not just their own; Birmingham has had the highest college football TV ratings of any city -- and by a huge margin -- for pretty much the entire 21st century), but I don't doubt that much the same happens in Texas or Oklahoma, or quite likely Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan (among others), too.
I don't doubt that it happens in basketball, either, especially at schools and in areas where their basketball programs have the following that SEC football teams do: the state of North Carolina, for example, or at schools whose success relies heavily on a steady supply of big-time urban recruits who make their names playing AAU ball (including a certain school about 150 miles northeast of here). It probably isn't new to basketball, either. Remember the days when Norm Stewart at Missouri had great success with the help of an assistant widely known as Dr. Detroit, who brought in so many quality players from up north that the program all but became the University of Michigan at Columbia? Even UCLA when the sainted John Wooden was there, for heaven's sake, had Sam Gilbert lurking in the shadows.
So it may be disappointing, but I'm not sure this is any more shower-worthy than big-time college athletics is in general, at least in the high dollar, high profile sports. It just happens that football requires the most players and generates the most dollars for the schools who play at a high level.
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