The NCAA has hit Boston Celtics assistant coach Jerome Allen with one of the toughest penalties in its history for his involvement in a bribery scheme during his time at the University of Pennsylvania.
Allen served as head coach of the Ivy League school’s men’s basketball program from 2009 to 2015 — his alma mater — and would later plead guilty to accepting a bribe for putting a student on the program’s recruiting list in order to improve that student’s chances of getting accepted into Penn.
The now-Celtics assistant coach would be later be determined by the NCAA to have committed other violations regarding recruiting and team tryouts, reports CBS Sports’ Kyle Boone.
This lead the collegiate oversight body to levy a 15-year show-cause penalty, one of the longest ever doled out.
The penalty requires any NCAA school to appear before an NCAA committee and possibly be fined and sanctioned for hiring a person hit with such a punishment — effectively ending Allen’s career in the collegiate ranks.
To his credit, Allen owned up to his actions, even testifying against the parent who bribed him with as much as $200,000 dollars in wire transfers, $75,000 in cash, hotel stays, luxury transportation, and other perks.
“I accepted the money to help Morris Esformes get into the school,” testified Allen, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jay Weaver. “I got his son into Penn; I got his son into Wharton. None of that would have happened without me.”
Allen would likely love to forget about that era of his career, and with this ruling having been handed down and his new role of assistant coach with the Celtics going swimmingly, he may finally be able to do so.
