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The case of Fred VanVleet: Even small-game hunting pays off for agents, so they'll never stop their pursuit https://theathletic.com/251263/2018/...their-pursuit/
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To an extreme, but not necessarily wrong, throwing the coach, program, fans, and school under the bus.Originally posted by ShauXTyme View Post
I'm sure there will be a lot of "hindsight" depending on how all this washes out. Little to no effect, everybody's good. The bigger the effect, the worse.Comment
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This story presented the "slop" as Marshall called it. The players who are currently playing who (them and families) were paid lots of money for signing with that school and whether they would be announced ineligible by their schools this weekend. Wendell Carter and Collin Sexton just to name a few. Those are dilemmas which I don't think that Landry is mixed up in that group. Is he?Originally posted by FadedCrown View PostComment
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If anyone's upset with Fred, relax. Who knows what the money was for. It's ridiculous players aren't given more. Shaq Morris was once living without electricity because he use his stipend to help pay his mom's bill before his. Fred should've made more than a lousy $1,000 in college with how much money he produced for the NCAA/MVC/WSU in his four years there. Senior Day souvenir cups. Billboards around St. Louis promoting MVC tourney. Jersey sales with specifically their numbers on them. TV promos for NCAA games/tournament games. It's a joke.Comment
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I think the NCAA ought to pay stipends directly to the students from the revenue they generate. Even, as Fred says, if its a hundred bucks a month...."When life hands you lemons, make lemonade." Better have some sugar and water too, or else your lemonade will suck!Comment
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We need a copy paste.Originally posted by Anthroshock View PostComment
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I, along with millions of others, produced a ton of money for a university by working on research projects, graduating, getting a job, and making money. I didn't get a full ride or a stipend. In fact, I paid to do it.
Am I supposed to be upset?Comment
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Clearly a disappointing human failing for Fred. Tough to say what the circumstances were that made him and Joe Danforth take this money. I'm certain whatever they were the potential consequences weren't thought all the way through. Unfortunate tarnish to his legacy, but not one that would destroy what was four seasons of high performance and otherwise exemplary public behavior.
It's easy to see it black and white looking from the outside. My cousin played football in college and they used to hit up the KFC after closing to get all the food that would be thrown out because they were hungry all the time and had very limited dollars to spend.
What would you do if your mom couldn't make rent, or needed a car repair to get to work? There are other ways out of these problems, but if a guy is standing there with a bag of money and no one is going to hear about it...Wichita State, home of the All-Americans.Comment
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Absolutely. So he received $53,000 plus some stipend for it all.Originally posted by Singeril View Post
The final four appearance made the MVC $245,500. The MVC made that much for each game played in the NCAA tournament. And with a six-year rollout equates to 1.5 million. The national exposure helped WSU create new relationships to raise funds on top of the extra funds from current relationships. It also helped WSU's enrollment grow.
So yeah, the 53,000 sounds fair.Comment
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Am I mad at Fred? No, but I do not get the sense of entitlement of well I am owed something. If you think your worth at a company is less than you are being paid, leave! No one forced anyone to play college sports. The rules are made for the majority of athletes. Hard to make rules for the top 1%.Originally posted by KmanTA View Post
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Would you have watched the NCAA Tournament if the top 10% of all players didnt play in it? Of course. Again no one forces a player to play college ball. The tournament is the Cash Cow for all of college basketball.Originally posted by KmanTA View PostComment
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I'm not saying these guys should be paid what their "worth." They are worth a lot. But if someone believes a scholarship, stipend and 3,000 is a big deal, they're wrong. With how much time they put into the game and keeping grades, how much time is left to work a part time job and make money that way. They should be able to make money in other ways so this stuff doesn't have to happen. The numbers I gave you are from one single year. Players should make more so they don't have to be tempted by $1,000 from an agent.
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I'm guessing you didn't have anyone offering to pay you for it either. I'm guessing no alumni or external company or agent actually wanted to give you money in school to get influence either.Originally posted by Cdizzle View PostComment
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Have you encountered the real world before?Originally posted by KmanTA View Post
Also, it's beyond a little naive to pretend that the experience and exposure provided by WSU, the MVC, and the NCAA did not help lead to Mr. VanVleet making currently 100s of thousands of dollars per year, and soon millions of dollars per year.Comment
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You're right. But does Wichita State get the same exposure if VanVleet's not on the team? Does WSU get Landry Shamet if not for VanVleet helping recruit him? All I'm saying is, 3,000 isn't that much to be upset with a kid over taking. And remember, this is ONE agent's spreadsheet. Who knows what other spreadsheets might say. Would you be surprised if someone else took money? If you're this upset about 3,000, you might want to save your outrage for when something bigger could come up.
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Article from the Athletic:
"Sifting through what was left of college basketball on Friday morning, after the walls were dynamited by Yahoo! Sports so everyone could see all the nasty business going on inside, there was on the one hand very little surprise. Marquee players at marquee programs got paid by agents, one way or another. It was fascinating and important to see the specifics, but it was mostly no great shock. Still, as I scanned the list, one name leaped off the screen as the emblem of the new way we must view the sport:
Fred VanVleet.
He is not the biggest name on the list. He allegedly received, according to the report, the comparably modest sum of $1,070 during his time at Wichita State, with his stepfather taking a separate payment of $2,000. But this modesty is precisely the point. Fred VanVleet was a three-star recruit. He wasn’t a top 100 player. He wasn’t identified at an early age as a future cash cow who was then hooked and bought on the promise of what’s to come. He was hardly identified at all, period. So why would a 5-foot-11 guard land on an agent’s radar? Why would we think he’d be worth the time and money to pursue in this way?
Here’s why: VanVleet became a good player. And when he became a good player, they came for him. And Wichita State may have to forfeit games or suffer some other sort of NCAA lashing all because VanVleet’s only sin, in a way, might be that he got good enough to get everyone’s attention.
This is the broader revelation for college basketball today, a new reality laid plain for every fan of every team: If your school has a player with even a speck of NBA potential, even the faintest hope of signing a professional contract, assume he’s being hunted. Assume there is money to take and that he’s taking it, likely as not. Assume that it is a daily, mostly unwinnable battle for programs to prevent this and prevent seasons from being vacated into oblivion.
It must be noted that in the case of VanVleet and everyone else involved, we have to see if the numbers stick and/or prove to be actual malfeasance, no matter how damning this seems at the moment. But if they do stick, they represent the great catch-22 for college basketball, revealed to the world. Of course if you recruit the best kids, they come with baggage. They’ve been snared. They’ve been bought. Or their parents have been bought. We knew this before Yahoo! showed us line items for thousands of dollars purportedly handed to Dennis Smith Jr. and Markelle Fultz and Bam Adebayo and Josh Jackson. But now we know more.
We know they come even if you aren’t a place that typically gets the top kids, if you are a place that unearths gems and they turn into something more than expected. Like Fred VanVleet. Or like Kyle Kuzma, who was but a three-star recruit and allegedly received $9,500 while he played at Utah, per the Yahoo! report. We know they come if you’re a school that really and truly and deeply believes you’re clean and you land a McDonald’s All-American like Demetrius Jackson, who in the Yahoo! report is merely said to have had a meal with an agent. On its own, that is no violation — only if the agent paid for the meal would it be an illegal extra benefit for the former Notre Dame guard. It may be a tiny thing or absolutely nothing. But this is what happens, the quandary every fan must now acknowledge: When you try to get good by getting good kids, the hunters are going to come. They’re going to come, unrelenting, and they bring with them the threat of a reckoning.
No, $1,070 is not an exorbitant amount of money. In a college basketball structure with any logic or grip on reality, Wichita State would not be punished for one of the best players in the sport at the time receiving $1,070, nor his stepfather receiving a $2,000 advance. But consider it from the agent’s perspective. By the end of this NBA season, Fred VanVleet will have earned in excess of $3.5 million as a professional basketball player with the Toronto Raptors. An agent might receive as much as 4 percent of that. Now, not all of it goes in the agent’s pocket; we’ve seen from Yahoo! that the money gets spread around to handlers and family members, that many of these players got bought with “points” on future deals, at least in this specific case of documents seized in the feds’ pursuit of agent Andy Miller.
But consider the return on investment. Do the math. Even at a 3 percent cut, an agency that effectively laid a $1,000 bet on VanVleet — a player who went undrafted, let alone showed the promise to be a lottery pick or a first-rounder — would make $105,000 by the end of this year. The money compounds. As long as VanVleet plays, the agent keeps earning.
Miller trafficked in big game. He was not perhaps as often on the hunt for players like VanVleet. Think of all the agents who are small-game hunters. Think of all the spreadsheets and expense reports we haven’t seen. As of now, there is an unequivocal response to any college basketball fan who might believe that agents wouldn’t come after their guy, because it couldn’t possibly be worth the time: Yes, they do. And yes, it is.
Never mind the one-and-dones and recruits with gilded futures. If your school fields a player with even a scintilla of professional promise, assume that player is being hunted. Assume he's meeting agents for a lunch that might be free at the time, only to have the bill come due later. Assume that Mom or Dad is tempted by hundreds or thousands of dollars in cash advances. Because the numbers make too much sense for the hunters. And they will never stop coming."Say it slowly and savor it..."
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