Sexton reportedly will play, despite allegations

Early Friday morning Yahoo Sports released a blockbuster story that has the world of college athletics buzzing.

Implicated in the main story was Alabama point guard Collin Sexton and Crimson Tide coach Avery Johnson addressed in a video from AL.com later Friday concerning his status for the game with Arkansas on Saturday.

Sexton was named in a Yahoo Sports report published Friday morning on a list of players who allegedly had family members take meals from an agent.

The suburban Atlanta product was suspended for the season opener as part of the FBI investigation that’s also the basis for the latest report.

Johnson said Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne is “leading the charge” looking into the matter along with compliance.

Regardless of how the Crimson Tide spin it, the entire matter is a distraction for them. He is the leading scorer for them, averaging over 18 points a game.

The story went off like a grenade throughout college athletics and is likely to have far-reaching implications.

The documents tie some of the biggest names and programs in the sport to activity that appears to violate the NCAA’s amateurism rules. This could end up casting a pall over the NCAA tournament because of eligibility issues. There’s potential impermissible benefits and preferential treatment for players and families of players at Duke, North Carolina, Texas, Kentucky, Michigan State, USC, Alabama and a host of other schools. The documents link some of the sport’s biggest current stars – Michigan State’s Miles Bridges, Alabama’s Collin Sexton and Duke’s Wendell Carter – to specific potential extra benefits for either the athletes or their family members. The amounts tied to players in the case range from basic meals to tens of thousands of dollars.

The NCAA is taking the approach of acting surprised this is all going on.

No, seriously.

The president of the kangaroo court that has progressively lost control of big-time college athletics over the last several decades, Mark Emmert, released a statement Friday morning after the story broke:

“These allegations, if true, point to systematic failures that must be fixed and fixed now if we want college sports in America. Simply put, people who engage in this kind of behavior have no place in college sports. They are an affront to all those who play by the rules,” the statement read. “Following the Southern District of New York’s indictments last year, the NCAA Board of Governors and I formed the independent Commission on College Basketball, chaired by Condoleezza Rice, to provide recommendations on how to clean up the sport. With these latest allegations, it’s clear this work is more important now than ever. The Board and I are completely committed to making transformational changes to the game and ensuring all involved in college basketball do so with integrity. We also will continue to cooperate with the efforts of federal prosecutors to identify and punish the unscrupulous parties seeking to exploit the system through criminal acts.”

Considering the NCAA hasn’t won a case in courtroom (they usually just stall all cases until the other party just gives up or dies), this could be the way they revamp investigations.

Let’s face it, over the last several years they have over-reached on investigations (Penn State), had to investigate their own investigative practices (Miami and Nevin Shapiro) and just flat screwed up too many others to start listing.

The guess here is this won’t stop with basketball and there’s no telling how high this will reach.

Apparently there is an FBI wiretap of Arizona’s coach being on a phone call where a six-figure amount was being discussed to land a certain player.

College basketball blue-bloods Kentucky and Duke are being dragged into the discussion now, too.

Now Arkansas will play an Alabama team that is dealing with a distraction and there’s not really any telling whaat their frame of mind will be at 5 p.m. Saturday.

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And it could make for a very interesting NCAA Tournament.