Posted on 06/01/2002 6:11:53 PM PDT by jern
DETROIT -- Outside the U.S. District Courthouse here, where he had just reached a plea bargain with the government and promised to spill his guts on college athletics, Eddie L. Martin offered a hopeful but haunting cheer Tuesday.
"Go Blue!" said the one-time Michigan
booster, one-time Motor City recruiting power broker, one-time Chris Webber personal cash machine, one-time operator of a huge illegal lottery.
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| Ed Martin and his wife, Hilda, leave a Michigan courthouse.(AP) |
Well, at least Martin still loves Michigan, even if Michigan wishes Steve Fisher had never met him.
Martin has been banned from associating with the U of M basketball program for a few years now, but stories of his largesse with former Wolverines athletes are already the stuff of legend -- the feds claim he doled out $616,000 in cash, bogus loans and assorted gifts to just four players.
And those stories will only get worse.
How much worse? Consider that what Martin has admitted to already makes this the largest monetary scandal in the history of college athletics. Tuesday, Martin agreed to cooperate with government and Michigan investigators insinuated there were plenty of details to come. So if what has come out thus far isn't the worst, what's next?
And who? Coaches, administrators and fans of Michigan's rivals have been laughing for years, but perhaps they should begin holding their breath, because Martin is fully capable of rocking programs near and far.
Anyone familiar with recruiting in Detroit during the 1990s will tell you Martin had a lot of friends in college athletics, not just Fisher and his staff in Ann Arbor. Coaches from around the country not only knew Martin, but courted him like the powerful middleman he was.
Through scores of conversations through the years, SportsLine.com has learned it wasn't uncommon for coaches recruiting in Detroit to bump into each other while stopping by Martin's stately home alongside the Detroit Golf Club. He was wined, dined and even flown on a private plane of one Big Ten school for years.
Which is why Tuesday was not just a momentous day for Michigan but might prove to be a historic one for college athletics.
Detroit produces around 40 Division I players a year, and only a fraction of those ever wore Maize and Blue. Common sense says Martin doted on plenty of them, meaning any number of programs might want to brace for the painful and pitiful details that are to come.
Consider the damage he has already done to Michigan and then realize he did that as an uncooperative witness to a program he actually likes.
If you don't think Martin, 68, is about to tell every tale he knows, then think again. There are witnesses, there are motivated witnesses -- and there are old men trying to stay out of prison.
Martin's plea bargain was pretty simple. He plead guilty to conspiring to launder money, avoiding a June trial and getting his wife free of similar charges.
When he returns to U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland's courtroom Aug. 29 for sentencing, he faces as much as 37 months in prison or as little as probation. Whether Martin spends three years or not a single night in the clink will depend a great deal on the extent of his cooperation, according to Cleland.
"The best scenario is probation, but it may not work out," Cleland said Tuesday.
"It will," promised Martin.
Which means Martin isn't just going to sing like a bird; he's likely to sing like the entire flock, making what we know thus far potentially just the tip of the iceberg.
Common sense makes you wonder the extent of Martin's dealings with other ex-Michigan stars such as Jalen Rose and Juwan Howard. Does anyone think one Fab Fiver might have received over a quarter-million while the other guys got zip? Rose said in a televised interview Thursday that Martin gave him "a couple of dollars" but didn't say how much.
"It wasn't in excess of -- you know -- trying to allow me to be rich," he said.
What about the Michigan football program? While Martin is a self-described basketball fanatic, is it a stretch to imagine a few football players might have bumped into the charismatic, cash-rich former booster?
Then there is everyone outside Ann Arbor. The Martin scandal has the potential to stretch across the country, much like the sordid details of the Myron Piggie-coached Kansas City hoops traveling team did a few years ago. That was the last time federal prosecutors used their considerable powers to wade into NCAA jurisdiction.
The Piggie scandal even reached its dirty tentacles into the once-pristine world of Mike Krzyzewski's Duke Blue Devils. If the NCAA truly believed in equal punishment for all members, it should vacate Duke's 1999 national runner-up finish from the books for playing the ineligible Corey Maggette.
The question is: How many Martin financed SUVs rolled through campuses? How many other coaches considered him a "friend of the program," like Fisher did?
In an interesting twist, this gut-wrenching day was actually the first positive development for Michigan since this saga began more than six years ago. That was when Maurice Taylor flipped his Ford Explorer while driving a carload of teammates and recruit Mateen Cleaves from a party at a Detroit hotel.
Looking at what is now being asserted, it seems highly plausible that Martin paid for the car, the party and the hotel that night.
Since that fateful morning, Michigan is on its third basketball coach and third athletic director. It hasn't reached the NCAA Tournament since 1998 (and isn't a favorite to do so in 2003), a stunning stretch for a school that played in three NCAA title games from 1989 to 1993.
Now, at least, the final chapter could be playing out.
For Tommy Amaker, the hands-tied head coach, this is a good thing. Ending the speculation, finding out the truth, accepting the inevitable NCAA punishment is better than wondering, worrying and having to dispel rival recruiter claims that the Wolverines are headed for the death penalty.
A sentence that severe won't be delivered, although something significant should be. Led by a standup athletic director in Bill Martin (no relation to Ed), the school has vowed to turn everything it learns over to the NCAA and accept its punishment.
Good for them. For too long the program has lied, whined and wished it away, from Webber, whose credibility has hit Clintonian levels through various stages of denial and then admission, to Fisher, who still maintains he knew nothing, never should have suspected anything and was wrongly fired by the school.
Any further details from a now cooperative Martin promise to be ugly, the grand total of payouts should grow, the ring of corruption is almost certain to spread. The will be the cold hard truth of a major-league criminal using money from a numbers racket he ran in Detroit area auto plants to line the pockets of high school and college athletes.
For Michigan basketball this might be, finally, the beginning of the end. For how many other programs is it just the beginning?
What a pile of BS. There is no equivalence between the two, despite the efforts of Duke-haters to the contrary.
The allegations against Maggette are that he took a grand total of $2,000 from this jerk while he was in high school. There has not been ONE allegation that anyone at Duke knew anything about it.
The Michigan guys were being paid six-figure incomes while they were in college. If it's shown that the school people knew nothing about it, I don't see how they warrant severe punishment either. Frankly, though, I don't see how they could not have known something was wrong.
Even though I'm a Duke grad, I actually agree with that. I'm just tired of this moral equivalence crap that the media spouts looking for ANYTHING wrong with the Duke program. There is nothing similar about these two situations, despite the efforts of a few jealous media people to show otherwise.
I hope Michigan gets through this. They have a great football and basketball tradition that's been marred by the greediness of a few selfish people.
Well, we ALL know one thing. Indiana University Football never had dealings with this guy. LOL
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