Jeff Greer, Louisville basketball writer for The Courier-Journal, says Cardinals fans have "scandal fatigue" with Rick Pitino. Time_Sports


There is one rule to get to the bottom of anything shady. It is hard and it is fast, and it was taught me by a college professor who’d won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism:

Follow the dollar.

Every scandal has money at its roots. Find the money, find the scandal. College basketball is awash in money.

UCLA’s gear deal with Under Armour is worth $280 million over 15 years. There’s Bruins athletic director Dan Guerrero in a 2016 photo with Under Armour founder, CEO and chairman Kevin Plank, posing with a Bruins basketball jersey and smiling like he just accepted the golden egg. Which, in fact, he did.

In 2016, the NCAA extended its TV contract with CBS and Turner by eight years and 8.8 billion-with-a-B dollars. “For the kids,’’ the NCAA says, though the kids don’t see a whole lot of it.

And now, a Louisville recruit and his family were to receive $100,000 in four installments, after the kid signed with the Cardinals and agreed to be represented by a certain agency after leaving ‘Ville.

More: Rick Pitino out at Louisville; Sean Miller also could face federal corruption scheme implications

More: Rick Pitino is Coach 2 in FBI 'pay for play' investigation, law enforcement official says

More: Oklahoma State fires Lamont Evans, assistant coach tied to hoops scandal

More: Column: Pay scale for top basketball recruits set. Now what?

I talked with a veteran college basketball assistant Thursday. He told me what anyone within sniffing distance has smelled for years. This is nothing new. The extent of it is growing, the delivery methods and the bagmen involved are different. The NCAA’s ability (or willingness) to keep its house clean grows more suspect daily.

But it’s the same drill: Follow the dollar. The NCAA and its “member institutions’’ have that down to a religion. Shoe companies down to local AAU coaches, everybody’s working some angle. And don’t feel bad for the “exploited kids,’’ at least not those 5-star types. They and their families know what’s up: It’s their palms, waiting to be greased.

The coach recalled a recruit who nonchalantly asked for a new Camaro and $10,000 in a safe deposit box. This was in the late ‘70s. Another school hired an  AAU coach as an assistant not because he was great with the Xs and Os, but because the school knew he could convince a coveted high school player to come with him. That was in the mid-2000s.  “Standard,’’ the coach said. “If you hire an AAU coach as an assistant now, it’s like waving a red flag at a bull.’’

When folks get caught, the usual faux apologies appear from the various heads of state, be they NCAA presidents or university presidents or athletic directors who smile broadly when they get their school’s sneaker checks.

It’d be nice to blame it all on the four assistant coaches indicted by the FBI. That would centralize it. If efficiently scapegoated, the four could take the fall and business would continue as is. Only this time, it’s not the NCAA conducting a hypocritical investigation. It’s the FBI.

Question: Would you rather have the IRS knock on your door? Or a G-man?

The FBI has “the playbook.’’ The FBI will threaten jail time to perpetrators, who then will do amazing imitations of canaries. We’re just getting warmed up. “Any time an assistant coach is involved, you can bet the (head) coach knows,’’ the coach said. “There are some restless sleepers right about now. A lot of head coaches are going to get fired.’’

So, what’s the answer? How does it get fixed and does anyone really care if it does?

Jay Bilas is a very smart guy, who knows what he knows. In the wake of the news, Bilas wrote this, for

“The current NCAA system and rules are largely responsible for creating the underground black-market economy for players. The free market works incredibly well and efficiently for everyone else; it is foolish to assert that it would not work just as well for college athletes.’’

Pay the players, in other words.

Add Bilas to the mile-long list of pay-for-play advocates, most of whom appear at March Madness time, like crocuses through the snow. Pay ‘em? Sure. The NCAA gets billions, the players get Connect-the-Dots 101 for free. That’s not fair.

OK. Let’s pay the young men. And the young women? And the soccer-ists and the gymnasts? Who gets paid? How much? Who decides? Does the all-American point guard make more than the world-beater in the 100-meter breast stroke? The swimmer puts in just as much work.

Where does the money come from? Most schools, even big ones, lose money fielding a football team. Does Ohio State, Michigan or Texas get to pay players more because their athletic departments have more money? 

Everyone wants to pay players. Nobody tells us how.

So the cheating will continue, even with the FBI knocking at the door. Follow the dollar. Money is money and no one connected with quasi-am basketball can seem to get enough of it.