shoe804

SoCalHoops Commentary

An Open Letter: To Shoe Companies
From One Of Our Readers--(Aug. 4, 1998).

Yesterday, we had a couple of articles on the NABC/NCAA pending legislation to reduce the summer open evaluation period, and a small, but feeble (yeah we admit it, we wrote it very late last night, and we were obviously half asleep and reaching) critique of an interview which George Rodecker conducted of Ron Naclario, a high school coach in New York which was published at College Hoops Insider as part of a six part series on the summer season. We got some e-mail on that one, some of it fit to print, some not so fit. Here's one from a reader, and it's really directed at the shoe companies more than at the NABC proposals per se, and we take our share of lumps as well. But we're not afraid to share them with you, so see what you think:

I agee with your position that the summer tournaments should not be shut down and that only a handful of the AAU coaches are corrupt. However, these corrupt coaches are well known and the shoe companies keep them on their payroll and look the other way. Just look at the recent article on the Kansas City AAU team that you republished. You don't think Nike was aware of the problem before it was made public? Unfortunately, when private enterprise refuses to clean up its mess, some governmental type agency usually steps in. If the shoe companies would dismiss these people in a very public manner and take a strong stand against their paid consultants attempting to cut deals with agents and having kids live with them and receiving cars and jewelry, then maybe the basketball public would have some faith in their camps.

It would also help if organizations like yours would come down harder on these people, instead of charging others with making unsubtantiated claims against them like you did in your article yesterday. The fact is that it has become very hard to prove anything against these consultants because everyone connected with them from the kid, the kid's parents and the kid's high school coach is just as corrupt and willing to lie as the shoe rep. However, it does not take a genius to figure out that when certain kids start flowing in the direction of one school or the other and despite the limited incomes of their parents they are suddenly seen driving new expensive automobiles (often of the same make) that something is up. If the shoe companies dictated to their consultants that the mere appearance of impropriety (not a conviction for a federal crime) was enough to lose a contract, a couple of so-called coaches might have to go back to their day jobs, but the kids, the tournaments and the rest of the coaches would benefit enormously. As it stands now, apparently even a criminal record is not a deterrent to being associated with a shoe company sponsored team or program.