The news from just about everywhere has thoroughly compromised our ability to wring disappointment from trivial pursuits, but as this was to be Final Four weekend, there's likely no shortage of college basketball fans who miss the tournament terribly, especially now that no nets will be cut down Monday night.
What didn't disappoint at all this past week was an HBO documentary called "The Scheme," a two-hour guided tour through the college game's all-too-familiar heart of darkness and a riveting look at how the FBI aimed a well-intentioned wrecking ball at the whole putrid system, yet for reasons that will likely remain unknown, never let it swing.
It's essentially the story of Christian Dawkins, the aspirant Michigan talent scout/agent whom federal authorities were trying to leverage to bring down high profile targets including Arizona coach and former Pitt man Sean Miller, LSU head coach Will Wade and former Louisville coach Rick Pitino, among others.
If you prefer to think that Miller never paid players at Arizona, this is not the documentary for you, but I'll let Steven Haney, the lawyer who forced the feds through two separate trials defending Dawkins, to put it more colorfully.
"Did Sean Miller pay players?" Haney chuckles incredulously in the film. "I think, if you can't believe the head assistant coach (Book Richardson), on a wiretap, who doesn't know he's being recorded, in his truest of moments talking with his buddy (Dawkins) and he's saying that Sean Miller's paying players, you have to be a really, really die-hard Arizona fan to believe that he's not."
Mind you, Haney doesn't care whether or not Miller pays anyone, and the same goes for LSU's Wade, who turns up on another wiretap in the documentary discussing a player with Dawkins thusly:
Wade: "We could compensate him better than the (NBA) minimum."
Dawkins: "You are probably right about that."
Wade: "We'd give him more than the (NBA) D-League."
Wade then discusses then-LSU recruit and current player Javonte Smart.
Wade: "I was thinking last night on this Smart thing, I'll be honest with you, I'm (very bad word) tired of dealing with this thing. Like, I'm tired of dealing with this (very bad word) (bad word). What do you think? 'Cause I went to him with a strong ass offer about a month ago. (Very bad word) strong. Now, the problem was, I know why he didn't take it now, it was tilted toward the family a little bit. But I mean, it was a (very bad word) hell of an offer. Like, a hell of an offer. Especially for a kid that's going to be a two- or three-year kid. I've made deals for as good a player as him that were a lot simpler than this."
Needless to say, Wade wasn't talking about arranging for Smart to take extra credits in the English department.
Miller and Wade are heard on wiretaps for the first time anywhere in "The Scheme," a slick expose in which the filmmakers have somehow presented a two-year investigation in a way that even the college game's ancient labyrinthine cesspools can be understood. The director, 39-year-old Texan Pat Kondelis, is the Emmy-winning force behind the 2017 documentary "Disgraced," a heart-wrenching examination of the events surrounding the 2003 murder of Baylor University basketball star Patrick Dennehy.
I reached Kondelis this past week in Austin, where he's holed up with his family that includes a 7-year-old and a 2-year-old, because I wondered why someone so familiar with college basketball dystopia from his work on "Disgraced" would want to plunge into it again for HBO.
"I wasn't actually looking to get into another sports project, specifically a college basketball project after 'Disgraced,' " Kondelis said. "But once I met Christian and we started digging into it, it very quickly broadened from just a singular sports story and went much deeper than that, and then Christian was just such a fascinating character, so complex, very dynamic.
"The story is insane, like you'd say, 'Look, you're being too sensational, creating a story this crazy.' "
Dawkins, son of a Saginaw, Mich., coaching legend and former teenaged baller of largely indifferent skills, is the center of the craziness with zero reluctance. He knew the game's back alleys intuitively as an enthusiastic habitue but gets swept up in a narrative overpopulated by dodgy players that's beyond his control. Former Steelers linebacker LaMarr Woodley, another Saginaw native, merits a mention in the film as the person who introduced Dawkins to Marty Blazer, described here by Dawkins as "an idiot," but also the character whose shady financial dealings magnetized interest in the case from the Wall Street Journal.
Dawkins eventually got in deep with a supposed real estate agent named Jeff D'Angelo, who was funding Dawkins' talent agency, Loyd Management, but who was also an FBI agent. But as D'Angelo pushes Dawkins to engage coaches in a scheme to pay players (shocker: they don't have to be pushed), Dawkins gets suspicious. Suddenly, D'Angelo gets put off the case and allegedly flees to Europe. In the end, only some marginal players and assistants end up indicted, tried and convicted, including Dawkins, who got a total of 18 months in two trials.
"It was like I invented all this," Dawkins says incredulously. "Look, I want to be very clear about this. Any coach who offers to pay a player, in my opinion, is a good guy. I don't see anything wrong with it. I think the coaches who are not willing to help out their players are not good people. The way the system is set up, someone is going to have to step in to provide what the families and the players need."
Pitino got fired, turning up three weeks ago as the new coach at Iona, now scheduled for probation in 3 ... 2 ... and ...
Not only did the feds back off on the big targets, they did them a favor by not compelling the wiretaps to be heard in open court. So, yeah, somebody got to somebody.
"I don't want to dismiss any theories, and we couldn't find any evidence to corroborate any of them," Kondelis told me the morning "The Scheme" debuted. "But I do think there's a cover-up going on. We don't know why this case turned completely and did a 180 from, again, trying to take down and get convictions on major college coaches to then, preventing them from setting foot in a courtroom, and ultimately protecting them.
"The NCAA can claim they want to hear this evidence, but obviously I think that's all bull. They don't want any of that stuff coming out. It benefits the NCAA almost as much as the coaches if that stuff never comes out. But the fact that the federal government is now actively trying to prevent evidence that they collected using taxpayer dollars (for a yacht and Vegas hotel suites among other things) from coming out is egregious, and I hope the audience asks themselves why? Why any of this is happening?"
Could it be because the NCAA (a nonprofit by the way), the shoe companies, the coaches, the universities and the people who write the billion-dollar checks to televise March Madness hold undue influence over everything in this ecosystem including, apparently, the FBI? And that players and their advocates will always suffer by comparison under an NCAA system that insists on an antiquated notion of amateurism for players while coaches carry around $90 million contracts?
Naw.
