March Madness Daily: The Rifleman speaks
Here's an Auburn story you won't read anywhere else.
Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down the intersection of sports and money—with an extra bit of humor and opinion. Today, we talk about some people who broke the rules:
Eben: In some alternate universe, few people would be enjoying Auburn’s Final Four run more than Chuck Person. Nicknamed ‘The Rifleman,’ Person starred at Auburn 🐯 in the 1980s before having a 13-NBA career. In 2014, he was hired by Bruce Pearl to help revive Auburn hoops. He quickly became Pearl’s top assistant.
Then things fell apart. Person was arrested in Sept. 2017 as part of the FBI’s probe into college basketball corruption. He was charged with accepting $91,500 in cash bribes to steer two Auburn players to an undercover agent posing as an athlete representative. Person eventually plead guilty to one count, and received four years probation. The NCAA barred him from coaching for a 10-year period.
That FBI probe hasn’t aged well, particularly as the entire college sports enterprise moved quickly towards paying players shortly afterwards. Person’s charges involved activity that still wouldn’t pass NCAA muster, but they also likely wouldn’t be necessary. Athletes are getting money over the table now; agents can sign them in the open. Next year, barring some 13th hour change, schools will begin directly paying athletes via revenue sharing.
Person hadn’t spoken publicly to a reporter post-charges until he spoke during the tournament to our colleague Daniel Libit. He said he feels like he had a hand in revitalizing Auburn’s program, and that he was invited by Pearl to attend a game this season but declined. He’s still a fan, and plans to attend some tournament games. He doesn’t go too deep into the FBI probe, but the story is worth a quick read.
It also got me thinking about how history will judge those that broke the very rules that many in power were fighting to keep in place, while simultaneously encouraging those underneath them to find ways to circumvent. The façade is coming down now, but it didn’t happen fast enough to help Person and many like him. I’m coming around to the belief held by Christian Dawkins, who served 18 months in prison as part of the same FBI probe.
“What happened in 2017 was all a crock of shit, basically,” Dawkins told Libit last year.
Dawkins and Person are both now on the college basketball periphery, still active but in much smaller, less lucrative ways. Other violators have bounced back unscathed. Pearl had a show-cause order of his own, which he received for lying to NCAA enforcement officials when he coached at Tennessee. The Tigers could play in the title game against Houston, whose coach Kelvin Sampson left both Oklahoma and Indiana after violating NCAA rules. Florida coach Todd Golden was accused last year of sexual harassment, but kept his job when a university investigation found “no evidence” that he’d violated Title IX.
If you’re one of those fans that likes to root for those who follow the rules, I have bad news. Given current public information, your best bet might be… Duke?
Programming note: We’ll be sending daily business nuggets throughout the NCAA tournaments. If that’s not your thing, you can opt out of daily March Madness posts by updating your settings here or with the button below. We’ll return to normal programming in April.
Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.