LOS ANGELES — Three and a half years after FBI agents arrested then-USC assistant coach Tony Bland in connection with the college basketball bribery and corruption scandal, the NCAA's Committee on Infractions penalized the men's basketball team Thursday with two years of probation.
"The associate head coach demonstrated a recurring lack of judgment that resulted in unethical conduct and representation violations for both himself and USC," the committee said.
The committee accepted USC's self-imposed reduction of two scholarships during the 2018-19 season and cuts in the number of recruiting visits. It praised USC for "exemplary cooperation" and for the "meaningful penalties" the school imposed.
Bland, who cooperated with the investigation, received a three-year show-cause penalty that means "any NCAA member school employing him must restrict him from any athletically related duties unless it shows cause why the restrictions should not apply." He did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
The former coach pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Manhattan in January 2019 to one felony count of conspiracy to commit bribery. Judge Edgardo Ramos sentenced Bland to two years' probation and 100 hours of community service, far short of the six to 12 months in prison requested by prosecutors.
"I was praying for the best and hoping for leniency," Bland said at the time. "I'm just happy to have another opportunity at developing as a person and to move on with my life."
Bland admitted to accepting a $4,100 bribe in July 2017 to direct USC players to retain a sports management company fronted by Christian Dawkins, another defendant in the case, when they turned professional.
Before Bland's sentencing, USC said in a victim impact statement that Bland's actions,"significantly damaged the reputation of USC as an institution, the USC athletic department, and its men's basketball program."
FBI agents with guns drawn arrested Bland in a Tampa, Fla., hotel room early on a morning in September 2017. The wide-ranging probe into bribery and corruption in college basketball also led to the arrests of three other prominent assistant coaches: Arizona's Book Richardson, Auburn's Chuck Person and Oklahoma State's Lamont Evans. All were terminated by their schools and eventually took plea bargains. Dawkins, former Adidas employee Jim Gatto, and Merl Code, another ex-Adidas employee, were convicted at trial.
Prosecutors initially accused Bland of receiving $13,000 in bribes in connection with then-USC player De'Anthony Melton and top recruit Taeshon Cherry. Melton, now with the Memphis Grizzlies, didn't play another game for USC, and Cherry instead went to Arizona State. Neither player was accused of wrongdoing by authorities.
Court testimony and bank records revealed that Dawkins, the chief executive of the would-be sports management company, pocketed most of the money that had been provided by an undercover FBI agent posing as an investor during a late-night meeting in a Las Vegas hotel suite. Dawkins gave some of the cash to Bland to spend at a bachelor party.
Several people with direct knowledge of the matter told The Los Angeles Times that Bland got much less than the $4,100 he admitted to because Dawkins spent an additional $2,000 of the total at a Gucci store.
USC placed Bland, the team's top assistant, on administrative leave following the arrest, then cut ties with him in January 2018.
