David Salinas’ suicide and the shady side of the NCAA

Travis Nicholson
July 27, 2011

There’s a messy, tragic scandal brewing in the quote-unquote world of “amateur” basketball. It involves AAU coach David Salinas, who allegedly ran a Ponzi scheme that cost a number of NCAA basketball coaches millions of dollars, before being found shot dead of an apparent suicide at his Friendsworth, Texas home on July 19.

Salinas operated an AAU basketball program in Houston, Texas, where his Houston Select Basketball would develop a number of prospects into future stars in college and the NBA, including this year’s fourth-overall pick Tristan Thompson.

The alleged Salinas scheme centers around his involvement with the AAU program, as he apparently scammed up to $7.8 million from a number of high profile NCAA men’s basketball coaches, including U of Arizona’s Lute Olson, Texas Tech’s Billy Gillispie, Baylor’s Mark Drew and Gonzaga’s Mark Few.

The allegations go on to suggest that a number of coaches (not necessarily those named above) were using Salinas’ investment advice even though he was not registered with the Securities Exchange Commission as an investment manager.

Using the business of personal investments as a foot in the door for coaches to get access to the top-level prospects at the Houston Select Basketball AAU program, the coaches are alleged to have ultimately used Salinas’ influence to reel in top talent to their NCAA Division I schools.

This would undoubtedly be a major recruiting violation for any guilty program, resulting in the loss of scholarships, a possible forfeit of wins or championships, and a significant blow to any team’s competitive chances for a number of years.

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It’s too bad the NCAA has no interest in investigating this scheme, or anything related to it.

According to Andy Katz of ESPN.com: “A high-ranking source with direct knowledge of the NCAA’s interest in the case told ESPN.com that the coaches invested money in the alleged scheme but that it isn’t an NCAA issue and concluded no rules violations occurred”.

Katz’ sources also suggest that coaches who had lost money in Salinas’ scam are meeting in Las Vegas to lawyer up and plan their next move. If the NCAA is to preemptively extinguish all possibility of guilt away from the programs suspected to have been in on the recruiting scheme, it seems what these coaches need most is to discuss how to deflect the skepticism away from their programs.

The decision to not investigate should come as no surprise to anyone following NCAA basketball. Though basketball scandals are not unfamiliar territory – recent accusations towards O.J. Mayo at USC, brothers Xavier Henry and C.J. Henry at Xavier, recent MVP Derrick Rose at Memphis, and perennial allegations towards Jim Calhoun at UConn and John Calipari throughout their career are all useful examples – the largest governing body of amateur athletics in North America remains oddly coolheaded about this obviously widespread problem. The mess of scheme, suicide and scandal illustrates just how widespread the systemic corruption within the ranks of the NCAA may be.

To say that people in powerful positions are often corrupt is an understatement. The very nature of something being corrupt – in that the people capable of punishing the corrupters are often one in the same – makes it difficult to prevent and stop corruption. Just like we’ve seen among African dictatorships, on Wall Street, or in the city of Chicago for first five decades of the 20th century, widespread corruption can easily become the status quo, leaping institutional bounds as it grows like a bureaucratic cancer that’s impossible to get rid of. Just ask Greece. Or the NCAA.

Compared to their corrupt counterparts at Goldman Sachs or Hosni Mubarek’s inner circle, allegations of corruption in the NCAA usually involve a “misappropriation of funds” rather than a murder – and frankly, to put them in the same sentence is a grandiose gesture that humanizes the evils of the truly evil, and demonizes the bureaucrats that at least once had good intentions.

Any casual fan of collegiate sports will know that among the 1,281 participating institutions in the NCAA, every year there could be dozens (if not hundreds, possibly thousands) of recruiting violations that will happen and simply fly under the radar. With corporate interests promising to bankroll the success of big name teams, the financial upsides to getting in bed with corrupting influences are too huge. With millions of dollars and the hopes and dreams of young athletes at stake, it seems the levels of bureaucracy in a college program can be bent and twisted enough to suit anyone’s interests who is willing to gamble their career.

Obviously, the magnitude of corruption is not the same for every sport. Few top-level fencing prospects drive a new car to practice every two weeks or so, though maybe it happens. NCAA men’s football is by far the most reviled for its corruption. This year Jim Tressel, Terrelle Pryor and the Ohio State Buckeyes are taking most of the attention, although the Oregon Ducks and Auburn Tigers are also being pricked, prodded and audited as investigators try and prove corruption allegations against them.

Even though many experts would guess that only a fraction of violations are ever proven (let alone investigated), it is fair to say that the spotlight is shining bright on NCAA football programs. Behind football, men’s basketball is the NCAA’s second biggest draw, yet the attention paid towards recruiting violations and corruption in the sport is significantly less.

Is it naive to think that the same problems aren’t there? Even though one basketball player can have even more of an impact towards a successful season that a single quarterback or linebacker can?

The NCAA has remained steadfast in their stance towards David Salinas’ suicide and the allegations that his Ponzi scheme was the source of systematic recruiting violations among major NCAA men’s basketball schools: essentially, one giant ‘No Comment’ regarding any of it.

The Securities Exchange Commission, however, is still very interested in the case even if the NCAA is not. Though the tepid interest in this on-going investigation is almost solely derived from its association with college basketball and the sizzle of scandal, the Securities Exchange Commission is concerned about the millions of dollars swindled from private people, but also possibly from public universities. Money that would in another scenario be used to build the education of a generation of young Americans, even the ones that can’t play basketball all that well.

There is also David Salinas, 60, businessman from Friendsworth, Texas, who has been somewhat of an afterthought in this scandal, even though it is his millions that fueled the scandal and his death that has sensationalized it. By all accounts, Salinas was a man whose passion was helping young basketball prospects achieve as much as they possibly could from meager circumstances.

As mentioned before, corruption is often the unintended result of good intentions, but sadly the shady business between the AAU and NCAA has always been defended in that manner.

Lost in the mix of this mess is the sad tragedy that a man killed himself. When the results of the NCAA’s institutionalized corruption leave the normal boundaries of play and mean the difference between life and death, the boundary between the NCAA’s ignorance and guilt is harder to distinguish.

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The Author:

Travis Nicholson

Travis Nicholson is a writer and graphic designer who started writing online in the 90s amidst a haze of bad haircuts and NBA Jam on the shores of Lake Erie.