The chickens arrive home

Welp. Looks like it's time to haul out this oldie-but-goodie again.

Because the only thing more shocking than the nuclear device the feds dropped on college basketball yesterday is that  it wasn't shocking at all. Sneaker companies all mixed up in a scheme to steer kids to certain colleges with whom they have chunky deals? Assistant coaches who then take bribes to hook up those kids with agents who line them up, when the NBA comes calling, with -- gasp! -- those same sneaker companies?

Well, pour water on me and call me Drip.

Listen, all the feds did yesterday was tear the lid off a corporate enterprise, and its attendant unholy bargains, that's been going on for 30 years at least. The Sneaker Wars, and all the slimy under-the-table deals that come with them, didn't just start yesterday. You can go all the way back to the meat-market battles for top high school talent between the Nike Five-Star Camp and Adidas' ABCD camp that began in the 1980s, and which continue to this day.

Pssst. Hey, kid. Come to Five-Star/ABCD. We'll hook you up. We'll get you seen by all the top coaches (or at least the ones we got deals with). And, oh, here's a truckload of gear. Noticed you needed some.

Truth is, this has been a long time coming, and if every Power 5 athletic director and coach is quaking in his boots this a.m. (because the FBI ominously warned its probe isn't over yet), it couldn't have happened too soon. The  whole rotten incestuous system -- from the apparel deals to the AAU cesspool to the schools using their athletes as billboards for those apparel deals -- has perverted everything college athletics, in their pure if mostly unattainable form, are supposed to be about. And for more than long enough.

There's always been money for somebody in college athletics at the top end, but the difference between then and now is it's no longer just individual coaches or ADs with an entrepreneurial bent.  Now the entire structure of college football and basketball is a corporate enterprise driven by corporate imperatives. It's instructive to note the feds didn't clue in the NCAA on their investigation until yesterday morning, mere hours before they went public with the findings. Can't say for sure, but I suspect that's because the feds see the NCAA as part of the problem, not part of the solution.

And so assistant coaches at four different programs are now in the hottest water possible -- taking bribes could land them in prison, not just on NCAA probation -- and you can rest assured there is more to come. One of the schools being investigated in this, though not by name, is Louisville. And if it's discovered Rick Pitino's program was neck-deep in the bribe-taking racket, The Teflon Man may finally be up against something he can't slick his way out of. You can only pull off the whole Sgt. Schultz I-see-nothing-nothing act for so long.

On top of that, we may see the first application of the NCAA death penalty since SMU football back in the '80s.

And, again, this isn't over. This is just beginning. Corruption this deeply embedded has a root system that spreads everywhere. Everybody, it seems, has their hands out. Which of course makes laughable all the hand-wringing about whether or not to pay players, or how you could possibly make that work.

Yeah, well. They seem to have made this work, haven't they?

Update: Both Pitino and AD Tom Jurich are reportedly out at Louisville. The dominoes have begun to fall.