A federal ruling on Tuesday could help some major college basketball programs avoid trouble with the NCAA.
However, the decision of U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to deny the NCAA access to evidence related to the criminal case of the three men found guilty of fraud in the Adidas pay-for-play scandal is unlikely to affect N.C. State with its ongoing NCAA issues.
Kaplan, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, denied a motion by the NCAA and the parent company of Yahoo! Sports for access to evidence collected during the investigation of former Adidas executive Jim Gatto, former Adidas consultant Merl Code and aspiring agent Christian Dawkins.
In the same federal court in October, Gatto, Code and Dawkins were found guilty of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection to paying recruits to attend schools (N.C. State, Kansas and Louisville) with multi-million dollar Adidas contracts.
The NCAA was seeking access to 24 proposed exhibits, including wiretap conversations, text messages and emails, which were not entered into evidence during the trial. Both the NCAA and the media company were seeking the unredacted sentencing memorandum of Gatto.
In March, Gatto received a nine-month prison sentence while Code and Dawkins received six months each for their part in the scheme. The case was initially launched by the Justice Department in a multiyear probe conducted by the FBI and trumpeted in Sept. 2017 as wide-ranging cleanup of the corruption in college basketball.
