The FBI's case against college basketball is now two and a half years old. It is still very much alive -- despite having its fingerprints all over the report, Kansas prepared to enter the since-canceled NCAA Tournament as the prohibitive favorite -- and dead.
It's dead in the sense that one of the persons of interest at the heart of the FBI's case, Christian Dawkins, can sit in front of HBO's cameras and tell his story.
Dawkins, a runner for NBA agent Andy Miller and an aspiring agent himself, was convicted of helping funnel Adidas's money to high school players and of bribing college basketball coaches to steer their players toward his sports agency.
"We admitted from Day 1 that we paid the players," Dawkins said. "There's no point in hiding that. There's no law in the world that says breaking an NCAA rule is a federal felony. There's no law that says that, and [prosecutors] twisted the law to make it fit."
Based on this ESPN review, the film centers around Dawkins's dealings with Sean Miller and his staff at Arizona, though Dawkins comes away with a grudging respect for LSU's Will Wade.
"Just the audacity. You've got to take your hat off to him, man. He not only didn't get charged for anything, not only did the government have all of this information and evidence and nothing was happening on a criminal level, he also basically just said f--- you to the NCAA and the university he worked for ... and he still got to keep his job and make millions of dollars. It's like the perfect storm.
"Will Wade is definitely a f---ing gangster for what he did."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylAG1MBDzb0
The film premiers March 31 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.