Hoop dreams

Christian Dawkins, James Gatto and Merl Code are on trial in federal court in New York for wire fraud and conspiracy. But the real question isn't whether they did or didn't do what they are accused of doing -- because they will admit what they did. The real question is whether there was a crime committed at all.

Dawkins, Gatto and Code are the first three defendants brought to trial in the FBI's investigation into the seedy underbelly of college basketball. The three men are accused of paying players. But who are the victims in this?

On Thursday, Bruce Bowen testified about the offers he received for his son, Bruce II (otherwise known as Tugs) from various schools around the country. He had (monetary) offers from Oklahoma State, DePaul, Creighton and Louisville. He chose the money Louisville was offering him -- or, more precisely, his father chose Louisville.

The feds (and the NCAA) are trying to make out the schools as the victims in this vast conspiracy. The only problem is that the schools are ankle deep in their own shit. It is no secret that schools have orchestrated payments to football and basketball players for decades. Usually the money -- or the "show up" job -- came from boosters which allowed the schools to deny any knowledge of the practice. That worked out well until SMU pissed in the punch bowl and had their football program shut down for lack of institutional control.

Over the years other schools have done things far worse than the boosters at SMU did during the heyday of the Pony Express. But no other school has ever had their football or basketball program shut down. The NCAA saw the damage that caused (SMU has never recovered from the death penalty and will likely never do so), and have let major schools off with slaps on the wrist for behavior that SMU boosters would find shady.

Meanwhile NCAA officials, conference commissioners, head coaches, television executives and casino sports books continue to make money hand over fist from college football and basketball while the players receive a scholarship and a small stipend. Everyone is getting paid except the athletes. But the NCAA doesn't want you to focus on that inconvenient little fact. They bring out their smoke and mirrors to distract your attention.

The NCAA wants you to believe that the principal of amateurism is at the heart of college athletics and that student athletes compete for the thrill of the competition itself. And they will throw the book at any athlete who admits to receiving any payment from a booster. They will suspend him and call him dishonest and a disgrace.

But no one has anything to say about football coaches making over $5 million a year coaching these amateur athletes.

The defense strategy is to admit to everything with regard to paying players. While that may be a violation of NCAA rules, it is not a criminal offense. Who was defrauded? Not the schools - they knew what was going on and they turned a blind eye to it. The job of their compliance officers was to cover up what they could and to create plausible deniability should anyone ever come knocking on their door.

The players weren't defrauded. They got paid. The fans weren't defrauded. They continued to buy tickets and watch games on the tube.

This trial is a waste of time and money. It is an attempt by the NCAA to cover up its own problems and to defend shamateurism.

A safer place to live

In 2006, there were 377 recorded murders in Houston. In 2011 that number dropped to 198 - the lowest per capita number since the early 1960's. The number of violent crimes in the city also declined. Interestingly enough, at the same time the murder rate dropped over 26% from 2010, the economy tanked.

Maybe there's not the relationship we thought between economic conditions and crime. What else might account for the change?

Surely it must be the deterrent effect of the death penalty. That's what the law and order types tell us. You remember the stanza - you let the state kill enough people and the rest of the riff raff will get the message that it just isn't okay to go around killing people.

Only that's not it, either. According to the Texas Execution Information Center, the number of inmates on death row has decreased over the last ten years. Texas murdered fewer inmates in 2011 than in any year since 1996.

I have no idea what accounts for the drop in the city's murder rate. I'm sure there are folks who are combing through data trying to come up with some theory to explain it. For all I know the drought caused the drop. Maybe people throughout the city were more worried about how to maintain some semblance of green in their yards than they were about offing someone who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.