Oklahoma State assistant basketball head coach Lamont Evans has been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit bribery, solicitation of bribes and gratuities by an agent of the federally funded organization and wire fraud. According to FBI records, Evans allegedly took $22,000 in bribes while coaching at South Carolina and Oklahoma State.
Documents released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office revealed ten people across the nation were facing federal charges for their alleged involvement in a kickback scheme. The FBI contents that Evans, and other coaches, took bribes to use their influence on players to steer them toward parties of special interests.
Coaches at Arizona, Auburn, Oklahoma State, and USC, as well as an Adidas official are facing federal corruption charges as a part of the FBI probe. Federal authorities said that the FBI had been investigating the criminal influence of money on coaches and student athletes in the NCAA since 2015.
The University of Louisville is expended to be named in the complaint for funneling $100,000 to the family of a player, from Adidas, to sign play for the university. The probe revealed numerous instances where financial advisers and coaches would pass on bribes to basketball players in order to influence them to use certain services.
The potential fallout from this scandal could be unparalleled. If Louisville is indeed involved in the scandal then it is possible that the basketball program will no longer exist in the capacity that it is today. For Oklahoma State, the scandal darkens a program that had risen from the ashes, so to speak, under Brad Underwood. If, more like when, the NCAA levees sanctions it could put the OSU even further behind where it was before Underwood stepped in. That’s devastating news for new Cowboys basketball coach Mike Boynton who took over the program in the spring when Underwood left for Illinois.