Just doin' bidness

Perhaps it was Ebenezer Scrooge, a man whose crossover of the soul became the stuff of legend, who had the truest bead on this. Remember? That scene at 'Change, before the Ghosts came to call?

He had corn to sell. A clutch of buyers wanted it. But they waited a day too long, and so Scrooge upped the price on them, and one of the buyers, knowing he was over a barrel, protested that it wasn't fair.

"No," Scrooge snapped. "But it's business."

Which, in the Blob's famously circuitous way, brings us to the curious case of Romeo Langford.

The  kid everyone wanted plucked the IU cap off the table instead of the Vanderbilt or Kansas cap, and loud celebrations ensued. It was understood Langford was only signing on for a year, maybe two, but that wasn't the point. The point was, he was a platinum-grade five-star recruit who picked an Indiana program Archie Miller is trying to restore to greatness, and by doing so made Miller's program a destination for other five-stars to follow.

Only now, according to the Washington Post, we find out he might not have been swayed by the merits of either Miller or what he's building in Bloomington. Turns out it might have been the usual suspect: Money.

The Post reported that Adidas, the apparel company for whom Indiana is a client, also decided (coincidentally, of course, wink-wink) to subsidize an AAU team run by Romeo Langford's father, Tim. Surprise, surprise, Romeo wound up at IU.

A blind man could see the quid pro quo.

What muddies this tale, mind you, is who told it. That would be Rick Pitino, the disgraced former Louisville coach. Personal experience has taught the Blob that if Pitino tells you the sky is blue, you'd best go outside and check.

On the other hand, his revelation isn't exactly a revelation, as Pitino himself noted. Arrangements such as the one he described, he said, are perfectly legal and happen all the time. And why is that, boys and girls?

Thaaat's right. Because as Scrooge said, it's business. And big-time college buckets are as purely and simply a business as the NBA or NFL or Microsoft.

We should know this by now, and we should also know who pulls the strings, thanks to those FBI wiretaps from last fall. What that investigation uncovered is, if college basketball is a business, it's the apparel companies who are the CEOs. They subsidize the programs. They to one degree or another subsidize the players, aided and abetted by their unholy alliance with AAU basketball, a teeming cesspool of corruption.

And the line between that corruption and what is just bidness is dismayingly thin. Which is what the FBI was looking into, and what should be the real cause for alarm in the Langford case.

Yes, their alleged deal was Just Bidness. It's how the sausage gets made everywhere in college basketball, and that's the simple truth.

But what if some agent for Adidas had decided to cut out the middle man and, on behalf of his client in Bloomington, come to Tim Langford with a wad of cash instead?

Well. Then you'd have reason to be shocked, shocked at the proceedings -- as would the authorities.

Such a fine line. Such a fine, shady line.